The FAA ordered to halt all departures due to communication failures. Airplanes in flight will be able to land
The halt threatens to cause significant complications in U.S. air transportation over the weekend. According to the tracking platform Flighty, at the time the measure was implemented, there were more than 30,000 flights scheduled for the rest of the day. If the restrictions are prolonged, delays could turn into cancellations due to the legal limits on crew working hours, with consequences for operations in the coming days.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States ordered on Friday, November 13 the suspension of all departures in the national territory due to serious problems in the communications of the air traffic control system, an extraordinary measure adopted for safety reasons that represents only the second halt of this nature since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The provision, which affects airports across the country, states that no aircraft remaining on the ground may take off until further notice, while planes already in flight may continue their routes and land at their respective destinations. For its part, international flights arriving in the United States will be evaluated individually by aviation authorities.
The FAA justified its decision by "extraordinary circumstances and safety reasons", after detecting serious problems in the communications used by air traffic controllers. Before extending the restriction to the entire U.S. territory, authorities had suspended operations in Chicago due to similar failures.
The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, confirmed that FAA technical teams are working to identify the source of the incident and restore the necessary conditions for normal operations. "We will provide immediate updates when we have them", the official assured through his social media, while the investigation into the causes of the disruption continues.
In light of this scenario, various airports recommended that passengers consult directly with their airlines before heading to the terminals, as it had not yet been announced when departures could resume. The magnitude of the disruption also creates uncertainty about how long companies will need to normalize their schedules once the restrictions are lifted.
This is the second national suspension of departures since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The most recent precedent occurred in January 2023, when a failure in the Mission Alerts system, used to communicate essential information to pilots, forced a halt to domestic departures for less than two hours.
For now, U.S. authorities have not confirmed the specific origin of the failures nor established a definitive schedule for the normalization of air traffic, while FAA technicians continue to work to resolve the incident.
