FAA issues rare nationwide ground stop due to 'extraordinary circumstances'

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Air travel across the country came to a standstill on Friday after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a rare nationwide ground stop citing “extraordinary circumstances” and “reasons of safety.” Aviation correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Air travel across the country is at a standstill tonight after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a rare nationwide ground stop, citing extraordinary circumstances and reasons of safety. Runways across the country were emptied tonight, and hundreds of flights have been impacted so far.

A short time ago, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters he did not believe this was tied to a specific attack.

I want to make sure we say this again. There's no reason for the public to be afraid or scared for your loved ones. This isn't another 9/11. I just can't repeat that enough.

People are making that assumption because that's the last time we had a nationwide ground stoppage. This is a telecommunication outage. This is much different.

It's just the third time in recent decades that there's been a nationwide grounding. The last time was in January of 2023 after the failure of a pilot communications system.

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