FAA Orders Nationwide Halt to US Departures Over Safety Concerns
Published Updated
Updates
- American Airlines said it expected flight disruptions for the rest of November 13, with the extent depending on how long the FAA’s nationwide departure pause lasted.
- The airline said aircraft already airborne could continue to their destinations and that its teams would work to get passengers moving once the FAA lifted the restriction.
Original report
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide halt to aircraft departures in the United States on Friday, November 13, citing extraordinary circumstances and safety concerns. Aircraft awaiting takeoff were instructed to remain on the ground, while incoming international flights were to be handled individually. The disruption could also affect flights between the United States and Israel. An FAA spokesperson said a communications problem was affecting Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which handle flights across the country. The agency’s instruction to operators was: “Traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice.” The United States previously paused domestic departures on January 11, 2023, during an outage of the Notice to Air Missions system. That system supplies flight crews with safety information. In a statement at 8:50 a.m. Eastern time that day, the FAA said the departure stop had ended and normal operations were gradually resuming. On January 19, 2023, the FAA said its preliminary review of that outage had found that contractors unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization between the main live database and a backup database.
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