The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide “ground stop” Friday afternoon, citing a communication issue affecting air traffic control centers throughout the country.
The FAA sent an alert just before 3 p.m. that “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety … all departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the stoppage was issued due to a “communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” Duffy said that the FAA had technicians investigating the issue.
The rules apply to any flight flying under instrument flight rules — the set of regulations that allow pilots to use cockpit instruments to navigate and control aircraft when visual cues are not available. Flights using visual flight rules are not currently impacted by the stoppage, according to Rachel Mayberry with the Wichita Airport Authority.
Flights at Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport, which handles about 80 flights a day, were grounded Friday afternoon. Mayberry said some flights at Jabara Airport may be impacted as well.
Mayberry said that any flight currently in the air was being directed to continue flying to its destination. Pilots were being told they would be diverted only if the receiving airport filled up.
The FAA famously grounded all flights during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. The next nationwide grounding happened in January 2023 when an outage of the FAA’s notice to air missions or NOTAM system led to an hour-and-a-half stoppage. The NOTAM system is responsible for alert pilots to safety hazards.
The last commercial flight departing out of Wichita's airport Friday afternoon was an American Airlines flight at 2:15 p.m. to Dallas. The airport's flight tracker shows about 17 flights scheduled to depart Friday that have been delayed.
