Mullin: FAA Ground Stop Was a Telecom Outage With No Sign of Attack, as White House Seeks $30.1 Billion More for Air Traffic Control

Since the FAA ordered all U.S. departures grounded Friday afternoon, Nov. 13, the story has shifted from what happened to why. The agency has not yet answered that.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin spoke to reporters outside the White House and said the cause was a telecommunications outage. "There was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious act against us," he said. "Everybody is accounted for, flights are accounted for, and there should be no fear to the public."

He repeated the point twice. "There's no reason for the public to be afraid or scared for your loved ones. I can't repeat that enough."

What the FAA has said about the recovery

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem was a communications failure affecting all of the FAA's Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Those 22 regional facilities direct planes flying between airports. FAA technicians are investigating, Duffy said.

The FAA's notice cited "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." It said inbound international flights would be handled case by case.

By later in the day, the agency said it was gradually lifting restrictions and resuming normal operations as systems came back online. It warned of residual delays and cancellations nationwide. "As enroute facilities recover, flights will be allowed to depart through coordination with the air traffic control system command center," an FAA alert said.

Some flights got out early. San Francisco International said Pacific-bound flights, including to Hawaii and Asia, could depart as of 3 p.m. local time. Hawaii's Department of Transportation said the FAA was allowing flights between Anchorage, Oakland and Hawaii. A small number of transatlantic flights left Boston Logan, including ITA Airways to Rome and Lufthansa to Frankfurt, according to Flightradar24. All domestic departures there stayed grounded.

FlightAware counted nearly 7,000 flights delayed or cancelled. At the height of the stop, some airports were running out of space for parked planes. About 3,100 aircraft were airborne and headed for U.S. airports, according to Flight Tracker.

Amtrak also reported website and app errors and unusually high call volumes tied to the airline disruption, and apologized to customers on X.

The AI question

The FAA expanded a new AI tool called Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories (SMART) a day earlier, according to Ars Technica. When asked whether the outage was AI-related, Mullin said: "You just can't rule out anything at this point. We're going through that process, and we're going to find out what happened."

Mullin said investigators will examine whether the rollout is linked. The system operates from a single location near Washington and only sends recommendations to the control centers. That makes a direct role in a communications failure across all 22 centers a harder case to make, though no one has ruled it in or out.

The money fight

The outage lands in the middle of a funding push. Congress approved $12.5 billion last year to overhaul air traffic control. Old copper wire is being swapped for fiber optic lines, and aging radio systems are being replaced at airports. Duffy has said roughly $30 billion more is needed. The FAA and White House asked lawmakers Friday for $30.1 billion.

Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo, a former United Airlines pilot, said the failure looked like a September regional outage that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, this time nationwide. He said it may be tied to outdated equipment. "If you don't have that ability, whether it's because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you've got to stop airplanes on the ground," Arroyo said.

Senate Republicans on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee argued on X that the stop shows why the FAA should put modernizing the control centers ahead of other projects. "No new ARTCC has been built since LBJ was in office," the committee Republicans wrote. They credited Chairman Ted Cruz with securing $1.9 billion in the Working Families Tax Cut Act to replace and consolidate the centers.

That sets up a plain question for taxpayers. Washington has already committed $12.5 billion, plus the $1.9 billion in the tax law. The system still failed nationwide on a Friday afternoon. Nobody has said yet whether the outage involved the equipment those dollars are meant to replace.

History

The last nationwide ground stop of all departures came in January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned and domestic flights paused for less than two hours. Before that, the last was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The FAA has not said what failed in the communications network or given a timeline for full normal operations. Mullin and Duffy have both said the investigation is ongoing.