I'm sure there is a reason for it but can they not be a little bit more specific?

I believe it's all virtualized today

I did a tour of Adelaide airport with Engineers Australia in the 1990s. We visited their obsolete IBM main frame, still running ATC in their computer room. They were tied to it by the certification of the software it was running. Just as you described.

There are contingencies for radio outages, but yeah, everything going down at once (if that's what's happening here, which I doubt) is bad.

I would hope that airports keep a battery operated radio + antenna in case of emergency with them, to at least communicate with aircraft within visual range of the airport.

So it falls back to local control, more in the style of visual flight rules. Pilots in existing flights will have to be vigilant and do their own deconflictation and stop new flights out until the network is back up.

All conjecture at this stage of course, but all the radios won't just fail. It is probably going to be a poster child example about the dangers of large scale integration. The attraction of course is that integration is very efficient, the danger is it tend to fail all at once instead of in smaller pieces.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/a-calamity-disrupting-hundr...

"we stuck digital computers into a purely analog pipeline, now with software containing a near-infinite amount of lines of code generated by LLMs, to make sure it's capable of a wide range of harrowing, incomprehensible failures."

And everybody here on HN applauds.

Attention: National Radar Outage

https://www.weather.gov/afc/radaroutage

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.

> 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.

I would go so far to say that if we had elected someone other than the clown show in 2024 we might still have a functional air travel system.

I think I see the problem. His claim to fame: “resident playboy” on *The Real World: Boston”. Would it really hurt to appoint qualified people?

Godspeed for everyone getting to where they need to be, somehow, or at least ending tonight with a roof over your heads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50489678

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ground-stop-chicago-oha...

Because American infrastructure is modern, well designed, maintained and funded? Because government is competent and rational? I could absolutely believe that would happen.

I could see AI deploying something that just obliterates those systems with requests.

If so we are really speedrunning into idiocracy with AI.

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

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.

(from Bloomberg)

    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.

13/2053

?

Unrolling these decisions is a monumental task given the decades of hardware already deployed in the field that will only be upgraded when the current unit fails.

And with 1960s technology, this might just have been a very reasonable decision.

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

VZW and AT&T are moving full tilt in shutting down landline central offices.

Literally the gay dude from Airplane pulling the plug from the socket may have happened here.

  Between the sectors administered by [smaller towers] are 20 contiguous areas of US airspace above 18,000 feet, each managed by an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC)...
  A flight is handed off from one Center to another until it descends near its destination, when control is transferred to the TRACON serving the destination, and ultimately to the tower controller serving the airport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_control_center

EDIT: someone below posted this, seems relevant -- the 'Radar multiplexer pipeline' that's on a "fast track" and an "aggressive track": https://www.sunhillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SUN3125-... TL;DR: upgrading radio systems from old analog tech to new digital tech, I think?

"Journalist Anna Giaritelli cited a FAA release which cited “rolling frequency outage” as the cause of the ground stop. A frequency outage occurs when the radio communication infrastructure that enables pilots to communicate with Air Traffic Control (ATC) controllers fails to function properly. However, a country-wide failure, at such a large scale, is unprecedented."

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/faa-issues...

which links to: https://x.com/Anna_Giaritelli/status/2121344915091206311

which has a photo of an FAA document

>The US National Weather Service said on Friday it was experiencing nationwide internet and communications problems that could prevent users from accessing products on its websites or cause outdated information to be displayed. Technicians were working to resolve the problems as soon as possible, the NWS said in a statement.

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

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.

After 1962 there was too much air travel to continue to shut it down for exercises, and NORAD switched to smaller, regional level things that did not shut down air travel after that. But the results of Sky Shield III in 1962 were the only experience that the FAA had to work from when they did the full ground stop after September 11th. Sky Shield III had tested how quickly air traffic control could clear the sky in the event of a nuclear war- the USAF had put up several hundred T-33 trainers, flying them randomly around the US and Canada, and then at a certain point the ATC had to get them all on the ground far away from major metropolitan centers (presumed lost in the war).

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/bessent-blames-lutnick...

https://x.com/_whitneywebb/status/2119846209871282200

“Generally considered,” really? Does that apply anywhere outside of r/conspiracy?

https://x.com/_whitneywebb/status/2119846209871282200

I guess if some plane needs to do an emergency detour threw threw that space, but that seems unlikely.

> Los Angeles Airport and Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International were among those that were closed, according to a list on the regulator’s website.

> The outages at O’Hare and Midway were listed as “due to equipment outage”.

https://www.ft.com/content/c9b119ff-d1da-46a7-b2b3-4ad0544ff...

When we are dealing with the FCC, grounding all flights and radio failures in open bands, you can drive a lot of changes.

There are a lot of pesky ESP32s out there, right? Did your company choose to go with the Espressif platform? You know, the hackable SDR one that crashes planes and clubs baby seals and tries to sell your grandparents bad financial scams?

  ...And Claude, remember NOT to make NO mistakes.

If you agree to their nominal leadership and a 1% tax then they go away and even add you to an honorary galactic charter.

I am watching planes stacked up on final approach to land at KBOS as I type. From flight radar 24 they are a mix of foreign and domestic. So incoming flights are clearly being managed here.

Does this imply some potential risk from inbound international air traffic? Or maybe the FAA meant outbound? Something else I am missing?

(Sure, a flight near the Canadian or Mexican border could in theory divert to a Canadian or Mexican airport, but it's unlikely many people on those flights have their passports with them.)

In which case freezing domestic (and the huge amount of load it contributes to ATC) but keeping international normal makes sense.

Of course... the side effect is the "fun" that creates for incoming international flights with domestic connections...

There must be some procedures in place for this - I pretty regularly take domestic (Canadian) flights that pass over the US where I don't carry my passport.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellow_Ribbon

As for asking already airborne flights to turn around, those coming in over the ocean might simply not have a non-US alternate airport available with their fuel remaining, so that's often not an option.

Alternate airports are picked based with regards to all kinds of contingencies (many of them meteorological), but "the US closes literally every airport" is not one of them.

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.

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

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.

[0]https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...

Seems unlikely.

There used to be a lot of invisible gatekeepers in a pre-AI world. At work, everyone can ask their agent to query SQL on databases that they were supposed to use through an application. The application and the security by obscurity(end users didn't know how to connect to the DB nor did they know SQL) were the gate keepers.

Under the hypothesis that some under-reviewed AI generated code made it into prod, the situation could be qualified as "engineers are panicking, because they don't know if they are the cause or not"

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

Current as of 1340 PDT:

    ATCSCC ADVZY 117 DCC 11/13/2026 ALL CENTERS EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES IMPLEMENTED

    MESSAGE: 
 

    EVENT TIME: 13/2120 - 14/0500
    CONSTRAINED FACILITIES: ZTL
    DCC HAS IMPLEMENTED EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES TO 240 MINUTES
    FOR ALL ENROUTE CENTERS DUE TO NATIONWIDE COMMS FAILURE. 
 

    EFFECTIVE TIME: 132121-140530

    SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 21:21

So the flight planning system is having problems.

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

    ATCSCC ADVZY 120 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONWIDE GROUND STOP

    MESSAGE: 
 

    EVENT TIME: 13/2245 - 14/0400
    DESTINATION AIRPORT:ALL
    FACILITIES INCLUDED: ALL
    EXPECT UPDATE:0400Z
    REASON: COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE           
    REMARKS: THE FAA COMMAND CENTER GROUND STOP REMAINS IN EFFECT. AS
    ENROUTE FACILITIES RECOVER, FLIGHTS WILL BE ALLOWED TO DEPART
    THROUGH COORDINATION WITH THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM COMMAND
    CENTER. 

    EFFECTIVE TIME: 132246-140430

    SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 22:46

A lot of very hardworking people getting too little pay for something so critical while their employers (some contracting company) take a lot of profit. Eventually they burn out waiting for help and a replacement system and retire or quit, then the systems really start failing because the knowledge leaves with them.

The FAA et al. have been working to modernize US ATC since ~2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transporta...

The next step is a ton of hardware upgrading, which always costs real money.

I was working on upgrading US ATC in 1995. As were lots and lots of other people.

If you don't take full advantage of that, you're missing out on possibly your only opportunity ever to fix whatever's needed fixing for years.

Is it something else?

https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/

A freak FUBAR of legacy systems, an unfortunate alignment of circumstances that could have happened anytime.

Pessimistic (paranoid) cases:

1. Intentional hacking by a foreign adversary 2. Vibe coding whoops 3. OpenAI agents "running experiments"

We are experiencing technical difficulties. We apologize for the inconvenience but please check back soon, as we are working to have the issues resolved.

Thank you, FAA Web Operations Team

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-faa-says-it-will-phase-o...

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

There’s still lower ground telecoms for take off.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/lost-radio-contact-leaves-pilots-o...

(I was near ORD at the time, flying toward the outage area. We diverted to ORD, and the pilot was very friendly about it.)

At the time I thought it was Microsoft's fault, as Windows 95 and 98 were susceptible to crashing when GetTickCount() overflowed, and this ATC crash was due to a 32-bit millisecond counter on a Windows machine overflowing, but in this particular instance the system was apparently not running on a version of Windows with this particular bug and was just an application error.

Aren't computers great? :)

He did try to warn us: /s

For anyone else it's unproductive rubber necking

Thermodynamics is like that.

And the rest of us would rather deal with our own lives than your preference to sit about reflecting

That's why I am all about robots doing the work; at least up to filling stores with textiles, food, building materials, and leaving everyone's "day job" to staying out the way of others who just want to experience consciousness and die.

Have worked among the people for 30ish years; started on farms, got degrees in EE/CE, worked in hardware/software; we are going in circles so drop the rhetorical pretense.

It's western vanity fueled by old allegory of religion about forever life and prosperity; my decades of experience studying applied physics and watching software engineers circumlocutions but now using fancy new JS lib! are little more than a scratched record jumping backwards to the previous groove

Let go of software dev; as is a mechanical task from the 60s-70s

Cultural memory begets cultural conservatism

This is why there's such an issue with holding power to account nowadays.

To really fuck up, you need a computer.

-- some clever person whose name I do not know

"Realistically you want fewer, higher-quality engineers who are educated in these tools and treat them with respect and caution. These tools are dangerous and you can’t play around. All it takes is one mistake and the blast radius is way, way larger. One mistake can do so much damage it undos all value of an entire year. Before downloading a malicious dependency was limited to deterministic behavior and could be scanned for. Now, you run a MCP server locally, it can prompt inject (in many different ways), and now your super powerful AI buddy is hacking you in ways a deterministic piece of malware could never. You could cripple entire companies through negligent use." And "And now we are controlling models that can be hacked in so many different ways and literally blow up companies. It used to be accountability the software wouldn’t break. Now it’s accountability that in creating the software we don’t ruin the business."

Not saying this was caused by malicious actors or negligent AI agent usage nor am I saying was the previous Microsoft outage either the above references but it doesn't look great. If our technology is really so brittle, we might be looking at a return to way slower world to put it simply. Maybe no remote work because it gets hacked too easy!

US-bound flight from YYZ. They shut down #2 engine and parked us in inactive runway. Pilot came on and said he was reading something about "ATC radio frequency issue" but has been told by United ops that it'll be cleared in ~30 min from now.

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.)

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/modern-skies-trumps-transportat...

Edit: screenshot here: https://i.postimg.cc/XqcsDQw9/image.png

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

maybe the last two numbers are a time range for which the thing is effective? and it's over now?

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

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

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

Claude: Transmogrifying…

Shall I stop all trains too?

Cogitated for 50s · done 14:53 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US-Wifhg2Mo

This also happened on 9/11 which is curious because the NVIDIA thing caused a public rift with Lutnick yesterday:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/bessent-blames-lutnick...

https://www.weather.gov/afc/radaroutage

...so at least it's not something 911-ish

https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/national-weather-se...

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

This is very likely misreporting the US 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.

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a519b8

It's Delta Airlines flight 1070

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL1070

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.

> “This isn’t going to just be be resolved and turned around within the hour"

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...

https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/1udup2j/trains_hal...

- [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-forgotten-operating-syst...

Looking at LAX departures, it looks like nothing has departed since about 10:30 AM PST, and everything later is showing Delayed or Cancelled. There are times after Delayed, but it's not clear those times mean anything. Some are now in the past.

"flysfo.com" is too overloaded to display departures. Stuck at "loading...".

JFK departure status shows almost solid "Delayed".

No good explanations anywhere.

All is well, this is not the AIpocalypse. Just some dude fucking up something stupid, as usual.

If there was an attack on your country, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing, just like it did 9/11.

All I am getting is pictures of baked cookies right now. So there is no attack on your country.

Planes are not falling out of the sky, as you can see on publicly available platforms. Nothing is exploding on the ground, besides the poor souls choosing Taco Bell for dinner.

I am confident you will not be abducted or murdered by Aliens today either, pinky promise.

So whatever happens is not an immediate danger to the planes still in the air. And no danger to anyone on the ground.

The most simple explanation is that the communication between ground and air is not working properly, and as this is necessary to safely fly thousands of planes simultaneously, they should rather stay on the ground for safety reasons until they figure out what is wrong.

If you have any specific concerns not addressed above, feel free to share them.

Probably someone prompted an agent: solve global CO2 emissions :-)

Maybe look further than Twitter.

The legitimate media from the New York Times to CNN and beyond all showed video of his news conference 20 minutes before your post.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...

That tool was first unveiled for the Washington, D.C., area airports two months ago, on a day when problems with air traffic communications failures also grounded hundreds of flights, after a circuit failed and it was discovered that contractors had accidentally ripped through a fiber line that was supposed to serve as its backup.

* https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...

If the communications issue is between US ATC regions, this makes sense. The planes are being handed off to other non-US ATCs where there is no communications issue.

Weather service down.

Frances fridges down.

Microsoft down.

Would they tell us they were getting hacked, if this was a prelude to war ?

Or would they just say "issues yet to be determined" ?

Interesting times ladies and gentlemen.

Or, this is just what everyone that said "dont move everything into the cloud" warned about.

Yeah, probably that. :|

The US is already at war with Iran. France blamed Iran for the fridge hacks too

Everybody knows attacks are coming from Iran and Russia regularly, it's not a conspiracy theory

> The agency wrote on Nov. 10 that after the D.C. test, it will “now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country to reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public.” The tech was already being deployed at some airports.

https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...

“NATCA believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System,” the union said in a statement.

Seems like there are three plausible causes right now given the extremely limited communication from the govt.

1. The AI system rolled out yesterday had more access than publicly claimed and managed to break things.

2. The ongoing large scale equipment upgrade went wrong.

3. General incompetence from a department run by an unqualified realty show actor, within an administration that is actively hostile to expertise and experience in the federal workforce.

What could go wrong really...

> The FAA has reassured the public and airlines that SMART only suggests routes and doesn't affect air safety.

Its more than likely that system is just created by some Trump donor and was purchased by the FAA to launder public funds to some company that Trump owes a favor too. Its not actually integrated with anything.

yeah... sounds about right.

Is there any evidence for this beyond a single statement from the govt? This administration hasn't exactly developed a reputation for fully accurate and truthful reporting.

Botched rollout of AI for ATC ...

or

Rollout of botched AI for ATC.

It sure didn't that long after every dev on earth started using LLMs for everything to turn to shit, so one may wonder...

"The FAA in June awarded Boston-based startup Air Space Intelligence a contract — worth up to $875.9 million — for an AI-powered tool to help air traffic controllers manage the nation’s skies and a related system for an FAA nerve center in northern Virginia to better handle plane congestion. The AI platform’s initial launch in the Washington area has sparked concern among Democrats in Congress who say it should be put on pause until they have a better understanding of how it’s being deployed."

"Over two dozen lawmakers have called on the FAA to pause its 90-day evaluation period for the platform, which began late last month in the Washington region. They say there’s been an “egregious lack of transparency.”"

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/faa-stake-ai-compan...

Feels like somebody was pushing their preferred company for a government contract and now is push for the government to invest.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vThhccsTanAz...

run jensen run

Also he says he saw a plane taking off LAX so fingers crossed. Still no news though

Company that created the tool (called Airspace Intelligence) is interesting in terms of demographics for these types of companies - implies lots if the tool 'does not work as designed' (which it will obviously not)

https://www.linkedin.com/company/airspace-intelligence/peopl...

https://flighty.com/airports

“FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traffic control”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50388001

Update: https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/faa-issues-nationwide-grou...

Sure smells like something foreboding

They don't spend a dollar more than they need to so extra gates for this would be quite the luxury. I guess what they need though is apron space or hangar space for the extra planes and the number of gates won't matter so much.

But I'm completely just spitballing here.