US President Donald Trump blamed the administration of his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the nationwide ground stop that disrupted both domestic and international flights.
In his first remarks on the matter since US authorities grounded all planes for several hours on Friday because of a technical upgrade that went wrong, Trump described the Biden administration’s aviation management as a “disaster.”
“Everything they touched turned bad,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Big money spent unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began.”
Thousands of flights were disrupted throughout the United States after federal aviation officials ordered an immediate nationwide ground stop because of a major communication failure affecting regional air traffic control centers, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed on Friday.
In an urgent directive issued late on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all departing flights across the country, citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
The agency told operators that all departing traffic must stay grounded until further notice, while inbound international flights are being handled on a case-by-case basis.
Duffy said the disruption results from a communication problem affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers—the regional facilities that direct aircraft between airports nationwide.
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them,” Duffy said.
Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 reported that roughly 3,100 aircraft in the air were headed for US airports when the halt was ordered, with no further departures taking off.
Major hubs across the country—including Atlanta, Los Angeles (LAX), New York’s JFK, Washington’s Reagan National, Miami, Houston, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Baltimore—confirmed the ground stop and urged travelers to check directly with airlines.
At airports including Los Angeles and Austin, passengers reported being kept on stationary aircraft on the tarmac as grounded departure planes blocked terminal gates, according to the BBC.
Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare in the United States.
Before Friday’s shutdown, the last countrywide halt took place in January 2023 after an outage of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) pilot notification system, and before that in the immediate aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Local authorities have not yet said when normal flight operations will resume.
