US flights grounded nationwide: A look back at the last major FAA shutdown in 2023
The FAA has ordered a rare nationwide ground stop on all departing flights, and the last time the US saw something like this was in January 2023.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights due to "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." This incident echoes a similar event in January 2023 when a failure in the FAA's aviation warning system (NOTAM) disrupted flights across the United States.
The current alert provides no additional information apart from the directive to keep departing traffic grounded until further notice. Inbound international flights will be handled on a case-by-case basis. The FAA attributed the crisis in January 2023 to a damaged database file in the NOTAM system, which provided pilots with crucial information about potential hazards such as parachutists, bad weather, airspace limits, and bird flocks.
The White House also dismissed the possibility of a cyberattack as there was no evidence to support such claims. The Department of Transportation initiated a comprehensive investigation into the root cause of the outage, which lasted approximately one and a half hours according to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The FAA's website responsible for listing NOTAMs was intermittently accessible during this period.
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