The United States halts all flights over an air traffic control communications failure

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday 13 November ordered a halt to all departures at the country's airports "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety", after a communications failure at the en-route control centres, which guide aircraft between airports. The order took effect at 14:54 US Central Time (21:54 in mainland Spain), according to the FAA command centre advisory cited by News9.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem affects the country's 22 en-route control centres and that FAA technicians are investigating, according to AP. The FAA attributed it on X to "a temporary telecommunications outage" and said every flight has been accounted for, according to NBC News. Aircraft already in the air continue to their destinations and international flights bound for the United States are being handled case by case, according to CNBC.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there is "no indication as of yet" of an attack, although nothing is being ruled out, according to NBC News. Investigators will check whether it is linked to the new artificial intelligence system the FAA is rolling out nationwide to identify problems and reroute aircraft, according to AP.

There were 11,000 flights scheduled to depart US airports after 16:00 Eastern Time, according to flight data firm Cirium cited by CNBC. Washington's Reagan airport is at capacity for parking aircraft and Chicago's O'Hare is close to that limit, according to a source cited by NBC News. It is the first halt of all flights nationwide since January 2023, when an FAA computer system failed; the previous one followed the attacks of 11 September 2001, according to AP.

What is not known: when flights will resume, the specific technical cause of the failure and how it affects flights between Spain and the United States. An internal FAA advisory, cited by News9, estimated the end of the stop at 22:00 Central Time (05:00 in mainland Spain), but the agency has not confirmed it.