Major US Airlines Request FAA Ground Stop Due to Communication Issues

Early this morning, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that major US carriers, including United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines, requested a ground stop for all flights due to a communications issue.

Air traffic controllers were instructed to inform pilots already airborne about the communication problems faced by various airlines. While flights already in the air continued, no new flights were allowed to take off. According to CNN, the ground stop affects all airlines' flights, regardless of their destinations. Details are still emerging, and the duration of the ground stop remains uncertain, with an update expected later in the day.

Low-cost carriers like Frontier, Allegiant, and Sun Country also reported outages earlier on Thursday, impacting their operations. Frontier attributed the disruption to a "major Microsoft technical outage," while Sun Country experienced booking and check-in issues. Spirit Airlines also joined the list of carriers calling for a ground stop. The situation continues to evolve as airlines assess the ongoing issues.

American Airlines initially adjusted its ground stop to allow certain priority flights but later reinstated a full ground stop. Both American and Spirit have since canceled their ground stops. According to aviation analytics company Cirium, over 27,000 flights were scheduled to depart from the US today, carrying up to 3.7 million passengers, with 24,000 of these being domestic flights. As of 6:00 AM Eastern Time, 512 flights had been canceled, a figure that may change as the situation develops.

Global Impact

Airports and airlines in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and India are also facing service disruptions. Christchurch Airport in New Zealand reported IT issues affecting departures and arrivals, while Melbourne and Sydney Airports in Australia confirmed operational disruptions. Similar reports have emerged from India, Japan, and Europe, with Ryanair also confirming operational issues. ABC News reported global IT outages affecting banks, media companies, and even the New Zealand Parliament. Berlin Airport, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, and Gatwick Airport have all been impacted.

Crowdstrike Identifies the Issue

US cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike identified the cause of the disruption as a defect in a content update for Windows hosts. CEO George Kurtz clarified that this was not a security incident or cyberattack and that the issue had been isolated and a fix deployed. Mac and Linux hosts were not affected.

Reestablishing Operations

Several hours later, airlines began restoring their operations. American Airlines issued travel waivers for affected customers and announced that it had reestablished operations. Spirit Airlines advised passengers to check their flight status as it worked to manage the impact of the outage.