US flight ground stop causes disruption at UK airports

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 14 Nov, 07:13 · Archive

A complete grounding of departures across the United States caused by communications failures has led to disruptions for British travellers.

A nationwide grounding of all flights across the United States due to communications failures at regional air traffic control centres has caused widespread disruption for travellers using UK airports. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the order citing 'extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety'. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said 'old hardware that went down' caused the halt, and that returning air traffic to normality would be 'slow'.

British Airways cancelled a New York-bound service scheduled to depart London Heathrow on Friday evening. Manchester Airport reported that three Saturday morning Virgin Atlantic flights to the US could face disruption. Virgin Atlantic said it was 'closely monitoring the situation and assessing any impact' to its flights.

The Daily Mail reported that the five-hour ground stop affected more than 1.5 million passengers, with thousands of flights cancelled or delayed. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin called it a 'national emergency' but reassured the public it was 'not another 9/11' but rather 'a telecommunications outage'. The Independent noted this was the largest such freeze since January 2023, when a system error caused a nationwide halt.

How it is being reported

• Americans face day of travel hell after worst airport crisis since 9/11 left 1.5 million passengers stranded with more than 3,100 flights delayed or canceled today... while White House says it could happen AGAINTrump administration officials have warned that the disruption, which Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin called a 'national emergency,' could happen again.Daily Mail · 14 Nov, 06:55
• UK airports face major disruption as United States grounds all flightsA nationwide freeze on American flights of this scale has only occurred once before since the September 11 terror attacks in 2001The Independent · 13 Nov, 23:32

In this story: United States · UK · Federal Aviation Administration · British Airways · London Heathrow · Manchester Airport · Virgin Atlantic · Sean Duffy

This summary was written by AI from the headlines and standfirsts above, and states as fact only what at least two outlets report. How we use AI · Report a problem · Corrections log