FAA halts US departures after air traffic control communications failure

The FAA grounded all departing flights from US airports after a communications outage affected air route traffic control centres. The nationwide stop was issued for safety reasons and disrupted airport operations, while aircraft already travelling to destinations such as San Francisco continued to land.

The FAA later described the problem as a temporary telecommunications outage. CBS News reported that an update to the private network used by air traffic control caused it to reboot and crash; the network is managed by L3Harris and serves more than 4,400 facilities. International arrivals were to be handled individually, and there was no indication the outage was connected to a separate Microsoft services disruption.