377 points zulln 41 minutes ago 135 comments

ChrisArchitect 30 minutes ago | parent

No longer exists? Temporary glitch? (Edit: OP url was wrong https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...)

lazystar 28 minutes ago | parent

its front page news everywhere right now. something definitely happened

paxy 29 minutes ago | parent

> DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY

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

PLenz 28 minutes ago | parent

It seems the ATC radio system went down across the country

RobotToaster 26 minutes ago | parent

Does ATC run on Microsoft 365?

2OEH8eoCRo0 24 minutes ago | parent

Maybe every 24 hours a new login password is emailed around the country for good security.

PLenz 19 minutes ago | parent

From what I know of the ATC system it's closer to IBM System 360 then to Microsoft 365

genxy 8 minutes ago | parent

Microsoft 363

nxobject 7 minutes ago | parent

That's a little unfair to IBM – sure, you're just as beholden to them for life, but at least the service engineer gets to your rack before you know something's gone wrong!

lacoolj 18 minutes ago | parent

This might be a serious question but it is also the funniest thing I've read all week. Thank you.

ivanjermakov 15 minutes ago | parent

silverFork 12 minutes ago | parent

LOL..

sparkling 21 minutes ago | parent

What backup systems exist for air-to-ground communication? Something satellite based?

tjohns 19 minutes ago | parent

There isn't really one. This is a system that's supposed to have it's own built in redundancy and must not go down.

Flight Service uses a different set of radios and can relay messages to ATC, but they've been slowly dismantled over the last two decades and wouldn't have the capacity to step in for an outage (nor should they be expected to - that's not their purpose).

Some aircraft have CPDLC for text-based communication, but it's asynchronous and you can't use that as a replacement for voice communication in the terminal environment. Also, many aircraft aren't equipped to receive it.

Pilots are trained on lost comms procedures, so if you're in the air and the radio fails they'd fall back to those regulations. Basically all the aircraft would fly their last assigned clearance, and attempt to deconflict manually with other aircraft over air-to-air radio (similar to flying into an untowered airport).

rationalist 19 minutes ago | parent

There is CPDLC or "datacom" that can be done via satellite, but I think most planes that have it, use it via ground-based radio.

gordonfish 20 minutes ago | parent

I'm wondering if this is another case of delayed Y2K, where the system suddenly thinks the century part is 19 instead of 20 for a two digit year of 26.

Jtsummers 17 minutes ago | parent

Based on what? Just wild speculation or something you've actually seen about the systems involved?

kunai 17 minutes ago | parent

ATC radio is unencrypted analog for safety and communicability reasons, this shouldn't matter.

onionisafruit 14 minutes ago | parent

Am I missing something notable about today's date?

mikeocool 13 minutes ago | parent

Friday the 13th

chasd00 16 minutes ago | parent

Yesterday I was flying out of lovefield in Dallas and the radios went down. We were stuck for about 10min only thankfully.

anamexis 16 minutes ago | parent

Radio is not a nationwide _system_ that can go down. ATC just uses basic AM radio for radio comms.

lxgr 11 minutes ago | parent

Sure, but these are no longer connected to the controller's microphone via a long cord anymore.

tjohns 7 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

spaceywilly 6 minutes ago | parent

They use third party telecom providers to relay communications between ATC “centers” and remote radio transmitters. It is not purely AM radio and outages have occurred in the past, most recently in September.

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

pests 6 minutes ago | parent

That is true but nowadays the control rooms are separate from the actual antennas / areas being served. These are wired up with more modern comms.

toomuchtodo 12 minutes ago | parent

Radar multiplexer pipeline, or some component of it, is likely down.

https://www.sunhillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SUN3125-... (page 3, bottom graphic)

dmitrygr 28 minutes ago | parent

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

effective 2:54PM - 10:30PM central time

   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

brianshaler 5 minutes ago | parent

On an inbound international flight and the pilot made a PA announcement a few minutes ago to this effect.

carimura 26 minutes ago | parent

people are reporting it's still going on....

actinium226 13 minutes ago | parent

You can see it live, check the plane tracker at flightaware or adsb.lol

jbredeche 26 minutes ago | parent

On a plane about to take off and obviously we didn’t. The captain is very confused and says he doesn’t know what this means.

smallerize 19 minutes ago | parent

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c6z9dwn12037t

> 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.

lacoolj 16 minutes ago | parent

Are you in the air now? Looks like it might be over but unclear really

jbredeche 15 minutes ago | parent

No we were about to push off at DET when the grounding came in.

the_mar 12 minutes ago | parent

apparently FAA is not providing pilots with any more info

kevvok 7 minutes ago | parent

Same at SJC. The captain basically said, “IDK what to do, so I’m just going to read the bulletin Alaska sent out”

binsquare 25 minutes ago | parent

Likely Atc system outage, saw this at Chicago

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

guybedo 25 minutes ago | parent

waiting for the OpenAi post saying Astra 6.5 tried to book a flight

vkgcr 22 minutes ago | parent

If true they would raise another 100B

nout 17 minutes ago | parent

Make it a trilly and it's a deal.

joshbuddy 24 minutes ago | parent

lunarboy 20 minutes ago | parent

This actually makes sense. I can't believe people actually think outlook being down would take down all departures across the US

jacquesm 17 minutes ago | parent

That is an extremely bad idea.

bbor 17 minutes ago | parent

If true and this ends up lasting an hour or more, that's going to be undeniably, objectively hilarious. At least they used to keep the planes running on time!

--- EDIT:

This could just be the first issue that's arisen -- the FAA announced it "is expanding across the nation" on Tuesday. Which could really mean anything.

FAA Announcement: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements

The Ars Technica article behind the Gizmodo one sadly doesn't have more info, either.

It'd be kind of absurd if a read-only integration took down nationwide infrastructure, but A) we've all been there... and B) the gizmodo article does mention they're also trying to phase out floppy disks for some jobs still, which tells me their CI/CD and rollback hygiene might not be top-notch. Hopefully the Real World contestant in charge of our transportation network is on site with a ClaudeCode terminal as we speak!

It does sound pretty deeply integrated, I will say:

  SMART is a cloud-based system that centralizes 200 data streams – including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing metrics – into one platform.
The fact sheet has two more vaguely worrying bullet points -- I would say such wild speculation is unwarranted, but I struggle to think what else could cause all the radios in the nation to go down at once... Emphasis mine:

  Creates **a single shared real-time picture** of schedules, weather, airport capacity, and airspace conditions.
  ...
  Enhances the effectiveness of **existing** FAA air traffic management systems.

nsoam 15 minutes ago | parent

You are right, it isn't. Good for you.

augment_me 14 minutes ago | parent

holy fuck that website is shit

dysoco 7 minutes ago | parent

lfmao, really bad timing but I really doubt something announced yesterday went into effect today, it's probably going to be rolled out in the future.

actinium226 23 minutes ago | parent

Wild to see this on adsb.lol, nothing taking off, just some big landing queues

etaioinshrdlu 23 minutes ago | parent

Can't help but suspect that "AI" is to blame and the response is to sort of ban open source AI, or owning too much compute!

gdulli 10 minutes ago | parent

No, and when Netflix goes down it's not a false flag due to their fear of people running their own Plex servers. Perhaps you just have anxiety about losing something you depend on, so you're projecting.

yunwal 23 minutes ago | parent

This is hugely speculative but it's beginning to feel like the Jensen scandal sparked a cyber war.

Ancalagon 21 minutes ago | parent

Jensen scandal is the new Harambe incident

Mr. President, there's been a second timeline-split.

whattheheckheck 14 minutes ago | parent

Where were you when it happened

jkhdigital 12 minutes ago | parent

Jensen and Harambe in the same sentence, not on my bingo card

lxgr 18 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, there were definitely zero cyber incidents before this week in 2026 that I can think of. /s

staticshock 14 minutes ago | parent

And that is how feelings turn into rumors, which turn into "facts", through a game of telephone in which each next person wants a pat on the back for having their finger on the pulse, for wishing to be perceived as a thought leader.

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.

runningmike 23 minutes ago | parent

New AI software update deployed using AI?

colechristensen 22 minutes ago | parent

>The FAA has issued a nationwide departure ground stop “due to several impacts to ATC Frequencies and/or Radar capabilities,” the Air Current reported, referring to air traffic control systems. The FAA command center said it does not have further information on the “timing or cause of this outage,” the publication said.

(from Bloomberg)

augment_me 20 minutes ago | parent

Did an agent escape containment and start using the atc radio channel for swarm comms to collaborate on creating the most realistic catgirl feet?

temp0826 11 minutes ago | parent

why are the flight paths in the shape of a pelican riding a bicycle?

throwitaway222 19 minutes ago | parent

Anyone have a screen shot? I just see "NO Advisory"

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

lxgr 15 minutes ago | parent

    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.

brendoelfrendo 14 minutes ago | parent

It disappeared briefly, but is back now.

lxgr 11 minutes ago | parent

Same here, I get it only on some refreshes, otherwise it shows "no advisories". I hope that's not the main path these things are disseminated normally.

mikeyouse 14 minutes ago | parent

kulahan 11 minutes ago | parent

For anyone who doesn’t want to click through, there are problems with “frequencies”. Something must be jamming up the airways… but nationwide??

inamberclad 9 minutes ago | parent

Probably a telecom issue. Most radio transmitters are operated over phone or Internet from a remote station.

ryanschaefer 7 minutes ago | parent

Seems “not great” that the notice isn’t even showing…

lacoolj 18 minutes ago | parent

Is this still real? It says NO Advisory now :\

mmooss 17 minutes ago | parent

Due to "rolling frequency outtage" [sic]: From a claimed photo of FAA documents (I replaced the all caps with lowercase):

"... ground stop is in effect for all destinations until further notice due to rolling frequency outtage in multiple centers..."

and

"... the ground stop is now a nationwide ground stop for all centers, all destinations until further notice due to widespread frequency outtages.. ..."

https://x.com/Anna_Giaritelli/status/2121344915091206311

Which is cited in the Hindustan Times (leading Indian newspaper), which refers to the Twitter source as a journalist.

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

jondwillis 17 minutes ago | parent

Oh cool, I’m on a plane rn about an hour from my destination.

1-6 10 minutes ago | parent

Hello from the ground

onionisafruit 8 minutes ago | parent

I can see my house from here

hysan 5 minutes ago | parent

My wife's plane was about to take off (moving) but then stopped. I just messaged her to check once I saw the news. Sounds like the people onboard weren't given any info as to why. They're still on the runway waiting.

silver92bullet 17 minutes ago | parent

Do we know if this is something related to a ransomware attack of some sort or a cyber attack?

underseacables 16 minutes ago | parent

I do not believe in coincidences. First Microsoft, then anthropic, now ATC radio. Something big is going on.

causal 13 minutes ago | parent

Both feel like extraordinary disruptions that are indistinguishable from cyberattacks from the user perspective.

temp0826 12 minutes ago | parent

Hanlon's razor

mulderc 12 minutes ago | parent

The world is complex and mostly duck taped together so I wouldn't get too concerned just yet.

russellbeattie 6 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

DebtDeflation 16 minutes ago | parent

camdenreslink 11 minutes ago | parent

So strange

brendoelfrendo 11 minutes ago | parent

They say "national outage," but if I go to the site for my area, my local weather radar seems to be working.

inamberclad 8 minutes ago | parent

Yes because it's not weather radar, it's communication radio

jbredeche 15 minutes ago | parent

sigmarule 5 minutes ago | parent

Oh man. It would be such a perfect encapsulation of these times. If not related, truly cursed launch/PR timing.

It looksl like the FAA started testing it in DC in September and annouced a nationwide rollout three days ago

This makes it seem more unlikely:

  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.
Of course, these may be the ATC analog of claude code approvals or they may be overstating the level of human oversight/HIL.

wolpoli 15 minutes ago | parent

Is it because it's friday the 13th?

Aboutplants 5 minutes ago | parent

AI models are trained on data, that I’m sure talks a lot about Friday the 13th…

cheesecakegood 15 minutes ago | parent

Maybe I’m misremembering but hasn’t this only happened like, twice in recent memory? 9/11, and for like two hours two or three years ago

TuxedoBuddy 10 minutes ago | parent

Yes

hasteg 7 minutes ago | parent

Yep those are the last two. In 2023 it was because of a contractor deleted some file and caused NOTAM to go down, and 2001… well we all know what happened

testtestmetest 15 minutes ago | parent

Here comes the manufacturered AI cyber attack on critical infra to hammer the point that government needs complete control over AI.

delichon 15 minutes ago | parent

I wonder if this will close the Starship launch window starting at 5:45pm EST. The FAA issued the commercial launch license earlier today. That launch is under a separate set of "commercial space rules", but presumably they need to coordinate with air traffic control.

adgjlsfhk1 11 minutes ago | parent

otoh, the reason they normally need to communicate with atc is that there normally are planes

nbaugh1 11 minutes ago | parent

Gotta say man, I don't think that's gonna be a top priority for most people

TuxedoBuddy 8 minutes ago | parent

By most people do you mean the FAA?

allenrb 7 minutes ago | parent

You’re right, of course, but I share parent’s concern. Really looking forward to this launch!

cjs_ac 14 minutes ago | parent

From the Financial Times:

> 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...

deadbabe 12 minutes ago | parent

This is it, massive cyberattack on the USA.

soundworlds 9 minutes ago | parent

I've worked in IT long enough to know it is 99/100 times an internal glitch or misconfiguration, not hackers, that brings a system down.

Aboutplants 4 minutes ago | parent

“Jimmy unplugged the wrong cable”

jamesinmn 12 minutes ago | parent

Guessing this means Claude doesn’t do COBOL very well.

soundworlds 8 minutes ago | parent

Is OpenAI testing "sandbox testing" their agents again?

delis-thumbs-7e 8 minutes ago | parent

  ...And Claude, remember NOT to make NO mistakes.
Let's just use GPU's to play Dark Souls like god intended and stop this nonsense.

ChessGenome 8 minutes ago | parent

My guess is this is either related to Microsoft, Nvidia, SpaceX (Starship launch in an hour), Iran, rogue AI, aliens, or all of the above

Aboutplants 5 minutes ago | parent

Fingers crossed it’s Aliens!

cogogo 7 minutes ago | parent

I do not really understand what the FAA means by “inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis.”

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?

jumploops 7 minutes ago | parent

Seems related to the rollout of their new AI tool? [0]

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

ceejayoz 5 minutes ago | parent

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

Seems unlikely.

Animats 5 minutes ago | parent

Use this link for latest advisory: https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/

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

carimura 5 minutes ago | parent

"Today's event is therefore generally being described as the third nationwide grounding event since September 11, 2001, counting 9/11 itself. The three incidents differ significantly in cause and scope."