An update ...
Live updates: FAA grounds all departing flights due to air traffic control communications outage
www.reuters.com
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The US Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights on Friday, citing 'extraordinary circumstance and reasons for safety.
- - - Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said all flights were accounted for and there was no reason for the public to be afraid
- - - Mullin added there was no indication the disruption was a deliberate attack, describing it as a telecommunications outage
- - - Flights already in the air may land, but aircraft on the ground cannot take off and international flights will be handled on a case-by-case basis
- - - The order followed an earlier halt to traffic in Chicago because of communications problems
- - - Friday's action marked the second nationwide ground stop of all departures since the September 11, 2001, attacks
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Aviation analytics firm Cirium said that after 4 p.m. ET, about 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were still scheduled to depart from US airports on Friday.
As of 5:50 p.m. ET, the firm reported:
- - - 600 flights had been diverted on Friday
- - - 496 of the 600 flights (82.7%) returned to their origin airport, while the remaining 104 diverted to a different airport
- - - The airports that received the most diverted flights overall were Chicago O'Hare (ORD), with 28; Denver (DEN), with 26; Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW), with 19; and Washington National (DCA), Charlotte (CLT) and Los Angeles (LAX), with 16 each
- - - Among flights that diverted to an airport other than their origin, Cincinnati (CVG) received the most, with six, followed by San Jose (SJC), with five
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