Ask Lemmy

There's no official word, but to add some context, the FAA deployed a new AI-powered computer system for air traffic control yesterday.

Again, no proof that that's what's going on. But it sure is interesting.

We never had these kinds of outages before they got rid of DEI.

I was on a flight when everything was grounded. I asked the pilot and he could neither confirm nor deny that it’s aliens.

My connecting flight was cancelled so I split a $600 Uber with four strangers

IMO theyre keeping it under wraps for one of these reasons:

• it was an attack and they dont want panic
• it was yet another huge failure of "ai" bullshit and they can't upset shareholders any longer so need to keep secret
• it was floppies

My theory: Trump Admin hired someone incompetent and they fucked up the comms. I mean that just the theme of trump admins basically

Outlook and Teams outage /s

The actual advisory from the FAA is:

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

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. 

EFFECTIVE TIME:  	132054 - 140430
SIGNATURE:  	26/11/13 20:54  

Source: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=111&day=11132026&gdp=-1&gstop=196093

Beyond that, all I've seen so far is:

Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, says Trump administration officials blamed a telecommunication outage but said they did not know its cause and that it would “take some time” to fix the issues grounding flights.

per NYT's reporting: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-nationwide-flights-faa/d2ae2ce1-ac6b-59ad-ad8d-daef4e181b34

Edit (longer quote further down from Mullin):

Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, blamed the ground stop on a telecommunication outage but said Trump administration officials did not know the cause, adding that it would take an extended period of time to fix the issues. “This isn’t going to just be resolved and turned around within the hour,” he said. “This is going to take some time.”

Well the news places just had a story a day or two ago about how they were rolling out AI air traffic control systems nationwide. Could be that their new AI shit the bed right away

The world dungeon is opening

They forgot about the speed of light.

https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

First step of a coup d'etat.

Seems to be "communication issue": FAA issues nationwide ground stop on all departing flights, citing 'communication issue'
"Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday that there's “no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us.”"

!asklemmy@lemmy.world

Gestures Broadly at Everything

does this include flights for medical reasons? Like transporting rare antivenom, and organs, and patients? I wonder how many people this will kill

I wonder if this is at all related to the GPS jamming that’s been happening over Europe that Vertasiun reported on: https://youtu.be/tz23G_UXCGA

Does the FAA use AI? 

Just three days before Friday's nationwide ground stop, the FAA announced the national expansion of SMART, a new airspace planning system. Officials have not identified any connection between SMART and the ground stop.

Initially launched in the Washington, DC area on Sept. 21, the platform combines 200 data streams, including weather, flight paths and controller staffing, to help anticipate congestion and recommend scheduling changes. 

The FAA said its expansion would cover airspace managed by all 22 regional air traffic control centers. SMART supports planning alongside existing systems; it does not replace controllers or control aircraft.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/11/13/faa-orders-nationwide-groundstop-at-us-airports-citing-safety/92765499007/

The outages across the country involve air traffic control radars as well as radio frequencies simultaneously going out, according to an aviation source familiar with what controllers are dealing with.

Controllers do not have any clarity on the cause and what exactly is going on, the source said.

Last year, controllers handling flights approaching or departing from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey had multiple radar and communication outages when problems with a copper cable carrying the information led to communication blackouts.

As a result, multiple controllers took trauma leave, which exacerbated already short staffing and led to long delays and cancellations. The cable that failed was eventually replaced with a fiberoptic cable, according to the Department of Transportation.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/13/us/live-news/flights-ground-stop-faa

Huh, I just assumed it was somehow linked to the Microsoft outage. Guess not?