It's eerie seeing the total number of aircraft tracked decrease. I put on a filter for 1000' to 80000', to exclude aircraft on the ground, and the number was around 12K when I started watching. It's down to just over 9.4K now. Wild.

    ATCSCC Advisory
    ATCSCC 111 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONAL GROUND STOP 

    EVENT TIME: 13/2053 - 14/0400
    DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY.
    ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION
    COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED. ALL DEPARTING
    TRAFFIC SHOULD REMAIN GROUND STOPPED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. INBOUND
    INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS WILL BE MANAGED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/s/HUT3wjABQ6

To really fuck up, you need a computer.

> Transport Secretary Sean Duffy says the FAA "issued a nationwide ground stop for all US airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.

edit: we're on approach into Seattle, so apparently we were one of the happy cases of the "case-by-case basis."

This article is very likely misreporting the US National Weather Service radar outage page you can find people reposting elsewhere in this comment section. The NWS page has been updated to say it does not reflect a current issue. Anecdotally, my local NWS weather radar is working fine. Also, weather doppler radar and ATC "radar" are very, very different technologies.

Given that the FAA issue also apparently relates to communications, it does seem like it might be related.

Flight EY8 from Boston to Abu Dhabi https://fr24.com/ETD6PX/429055e2

The intent around the ground stop is to reduce in-air U.S. traffic.

So my guess this is what it means "case by case". Some which are close to destination would be manually routed, others will land in different places.

Depending on the nature of the disruption it may be they simply have drastically reduced capacity to handle traffic so landings may be much slower and they'll manage the traffic based on various priorities.

Like if you're ordering a pizza they don't need the story of your day, why you chose pepperoni, or what movie you plan to watch. Somebody else might be interested, but not the pizza guy.

> [The] FAA also says a D.C.-based team of experts validates findings before they’re ever passed on to air traffic control, and the controllers retain the final decision on whether to accept SMART’s suggestions.

Seems unlikely.

And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.

https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...

EVENT TIME: 13/2100 - 14/0300 USERS CAN EXPECT AIRBORNE HOLDING TO ANY AND ALL AIRPORTS WITHIN THE NAS DUE EQUIPTMENT OUTAGES. UPDATES WILL BE ISSUED AS ADITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. EFFECTIVE TIME:

132120-140330 SIGNATURE:

26/11/13 21:20

Edit: end date of tomorrow??? Is that just temporary?

Insane. It looks like they are showing no advisory on first page view, then advisory? Can others confirm?

There's a query form for looking up old advisories, and it's not returning anything for the last 15 days.

It's actually quite impressive, you have to really try to be so bad at your job of building redundant systems that some failure mode implausibly affects everything nation wide, yet allows Canadian domestic flights to proceed fine.

Weird things happen when you destroy the federal infra, aka the USA.

Am I being hyperbolic? Well, this was the first national ground stop since 9/11... and for what?

And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.

--- EDIT:

This could just be the first issue that's arisen -- the FAA announced it "is expanding across the nation" on Tuesday. Which could really mean anything.

FAA Announcement: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements

The Ars Technica article behind the Gizmodo one sadly doesn't have more info, either.

It'd be kind of absurd if a read-only integration took down nationwide infrastructure, but A) we've all been there... and B) the gizmodo article does mention they're also trying to phase out floppy disks for some jobs still, which tells me their CI/CD and rollback hygiene might not be top-notch. Hopefully the Real World contestant in charge of our transportation network is on site with a ClaudeCode terminal as we speak!

It does sound pretty deeply integrated, I will say:

  SMART is a cloud-based system that centralizes 200 data streams – including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing metrics – into one platform.

  Creates **a single shared real-time picture** of schedules, weather, airport capacity, and airspace conditions.
  ...
  Enhances the effectiveness of **existing** FAA air traffic management systems.

Last time this happened in July it was due to some network handoff issue so maybe there is some fiber cut somewhere? (My friend said last time it was NE corridor Verizon fiber cut.)

You need to wait for the third shoe to drop.

And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.

It looks like the FAA started testing it in DC in September and annouced a nationwide rollout three days ago (https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements). This makes it seem more unlikely to be the cause, though:

  A team of FAA specialists in the SMART center in Washington, D.C., analyzes and validates the SMART data and provides scheduling recommendations to the agency’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, VA. The Command Center then routes these recommendations to air traffic control facilities for local leadership to consider.

And then "journalists" "feel" like they have to report on things because as long as they say they're reporting that "someone else had a feeling" they're not technically wrong, and they have bosses breathing down their necks to make the business work, to grow their monetizable audience.

And then no one knows what's true anymore, because we chose to be entertained instead of choosing to be informed.

Mr. President, there's been a second timeline-split.