Airspace reopens after outage; nine T.F. Green flights canceled
The FAA posted on its X account at 5:02 p.m. that “There has been a temporary telecommunications outage – out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted. Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis.”
“The FAA has declared a nationwide ground stop related to frequency issues with air traffic control,” Bill Fischer, spokesperson for the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, said in an emailed statement shortly before 5 p.m. “Like every airport in the nation, PVD is impacted by this ground stop. All departures are halted at this time.”
Fischer said travelers should contact their airlines for information on specific impacts and delays regarding their flights. The length of the ground stop order and how many flights at T.F. Green would be delayed were not immediately clear.
The shutdown reached beyond Rhode Island. Samantha Decker, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Port Authority, said in an email Friday that the ground stop was affecting Boston Logan Airport as well. “We are monitoring the situation and working with the FAA and our airline partners,” Decker said.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an X post at 4:16 p.m. that FAA technicians were investigating the issue and that updates would be issued as they became available.
Aircraft already in the air were still permitted to land under the order, while international flights would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Officials said in a White House briefing Friday night that air space opened up again at about 8:15 p.m. Eastern.
The stop was the most severe shutdown of air travel since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to reporting from The New York Times.
By Friday night, the T.F. Green website showed nine flights departing between 4 and 8:30 p.m. were canceled, with five others scheduled to depart between over two and seven hours late.