Photos show trouble at airports nationwide as FAA grounds all flights

• Passengers are being taken off planes nationwide.
• The FAA ordered all planes grounded.
• The Transportation Secretary cited a "communications" issue at all air-traffic control centers.

It's a bad time to be traveling.

Passengers are being deplaned, and flights are delayed after the FAA grounded every flight nationwide because of what it called "extraordinary circumstances."

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the ground stop was ordered because of a "communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers."

"FAA technicians are investigating the issue," Duffy wrote in a post on X.

As the ground stop became a multi-hour ordeal, passengers have begun to crowd boarding areas, have been asked to leave flights, and are scrambling to find their luggage.

'All flights have been halted'

Boarding areas began to fill up at airports across the country.

On Friday afternoon, the FAA said in a post on X that there has been a temporary telecommunications outage.

"Out of an abundance of caution, all flights have been halted," said the FAA. "Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis."

The exact cause remains unclear

Flight boards are flashing red and orange across all major airports. Transportation officials have not yet said why they issued the ground stop.

The FAA is prepared to make a system update

In some airports, stranded passengers are congregating in terminals as security check lines grow longer.

In June, Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford announced that the agency awarded a contract to Air Space Intelligence for two technologies said to improve how flights are scheduled and managed across the national airspace system.

The new system, named SMART, runs on Air Space Intelligence's National Airspace System, which uses "the AI that models the entire system, from the airline operation to air traffic control, and clears the bottlenecks before delays cascade."

Air Space Intelligence said in an X post that the new system was not the cause of the communications problem that prompted the ground stop.

lines are growing in many airports

Jon Lett, a passenger who was traveling from the Salt Lake City Airport to Chicago, told Business Insider that everyone on his flight has been told to disembark and wait.

Lett said that, though the mood among passengers remains "chill," there is no telling whether his flight will be able to depart anytime soon.

Planes are parked on the tarmac

Photos show planes parked back-to-back at Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

National ground stops are historically rare for the FAA.

In January 2023, the FAA halted flights because of an outage involving its pilot alert system. Before that, nationwide air traffic was halted following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Traffic outside the airports also began to pile up

Traffic outside airports began to pile up as the nationwide ground stop became a multi-hour emergency.

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