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Worried passengers, grounded planes: New York airport chaos caught on camera after FAA ground stop
The Federal Aviation Administration today grounded all departing flights for hours due to issues caused by a "telecommunication outage."
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted the rare nationwide ground stop on all US domestic flights after more than four hours of uncertainty triggered by a “temporary telecommunications outage”. The prolonged halt caused thousands of flight delays and cancellations across major airports.
What did the FAA say during the outage?
In a tweet FAA had stated, “There has been a temporary telecommunications outage - out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted. Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis.”
Also Read: US flights grounded LIVE Update
Before the ground stop was lifted, the sudden halt triggered immediate chaos across major US travel hubs, including New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Videos circulating on social media showed rows of grounded planes sitting idle on the tarmac, worried passengers crowding departure gates awaiting updates, and gridlocked traffic outside the airport.
Soon after FAA’s initial statement, a tweet was shared from the official X account dedicated to LaGuardia Airport. It read, “The FAA has issued a nationwide ground stop for all flights. Travelers should confirm their flight status with their airline before heading to the airport.”
One of the videos that surfaced online showed the airport announcing "We'll be closing the gates area" inside Terminal B. As the video progressed, worried passengers were seen trying to comprehend the situation.
Another video captured multiple aircraft queued on the tarmac with their lights on.
The scene outside the airport was chaotic as well, with traffic slowing to a crawl along the approach roads. Another viral video showed long lines of cars, taxis, and buses bumper-to-bumper outside the airport.
While domestic departures have now been cleared to resume following the FAA's update, airlines and airports continue to work through a massive backlog of delayed and cancelled flights nationwide.
Sean Duffy blames old tech, overloaded routers
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy blamed old air traffic control technology and routers overloaded with data for the nationwide ground stop. “What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” he said.
“The president, for the last year, has been asking Congress to fully fund a full build of a brand new air traffic control system.”
“Our routers actually got overloaded with data, and… they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down,” he added.
Was it linked to the Microsoft outage?
The aviation disruption came just a day after a separate, massive global Microsoft outage that affected Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 services for millions of users across more than 70 countries. Social media soon began speculating about whether there was any connection between the outages.
However, both Microsoft and US officials denied any connection between the two incidents.
In a tweet, the tech company stated, “We have no indication that the FAA’s nationwide ground stop is related to any Microsoft services.”
In a recent press briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stressed, “There is no connection between this and Microsoft. I know a lot of people are making that jump,” adding, “I do understand the internet traffic and where all these conspiracies start running towards. I just can’t say this enough.”
