Planes across the United States were ordered to stay on the ground after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop, citing "extraordinary circumstances" and safety reasons. The trigger, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, was a communication problem affecting all of the country's Air Route Traffic Control Centers — the facilities that manage flights in transit. Officials said the cause is still being investigated.

The scale of the action is unusual. This is only the second time all US departures have been halted since the September 11 attacks in 2001. The other was in January 2023, when the FAA paused domestic departures for under two hours after a database failure. Flights already in the air were allowed to finish their journeys this time, but nothing new could leave until the order was lifted.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin addressed reporters just after 5 p.m. ET and moved quickly to calm fears, saying everyone flying was safe and that aircraft would be brought down in a safe, orderly way. He was blunt about what it was not: "This isn't another 9/11. This is a telecommunication outage." Still, he declined to rule anything out while the investigation continues, and the White House had not commented on the stoppage at the time of the source report.

The knock-on effects were immediate. Passengers landing in Texas described sitting on the runway with engines off, waiting for a gate. An American Airlines traveller said the airline had already pulled checked bags off the plane and was handing out rebooking information, with staff suggesting departures might not resume until at least 11 p.m. American confirmed the pause in a statement, saying disruption would last "for the rest of the day" depending on how long the stop held, and promising "all hands on deck" once flying resumes.

The timing makes recovery harder. It happened on a Friday, and ESPN reported that numerous college football teams had not yet flown to their destinations for Saturday's fixtures — one example of how a single afternoon of stopped departures cascades into days of rebooking. Anyone flying out of the US over the following weekend should expect delays, cancelled legs and crowded rebooking lines even after the stop is lifted.

For holidaymakers, the practical takeaway is straightforward: when a ground stop hits, don't rush to the airport for a cancelled flight — check your airline's app or website first, since carriers like American were proactively issuing rebooking options before passengers even left the terminal. Keep receipts for hotels and meals if you're stuck overnight, as compensation rules differ between airlines. And remember these events are rare: two nationwide stops in over two decades means the overwhelming majority of trips go through without incident, even as Friday the 13th jokes made the rounds among grounded passengers.