The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has stopped every flight departing from airports in the United States. A communications failure hit the air traffic control centres that guide planes between airports. The order came in at 3.54pm Eastern time on Friday, 13 November, just before 9pm here in Ireland. That has left a lot of Aer Lingus passengers on both sides of the Atlantic wondering whether they’re going anywhere this weekend.
In short, planes already in the air can land and planes waiting at US gates mostly can’t take off. A small number of departures are starting to get away as individual control centres recover. Aer Lingus has confirmed that its flights heading to the US are being allowed to land, and that some of its flights from the US are now being cleared to depart.
What Aer Lingus has said
In a statement Aer Lingus said it is aware of the FAA’s nationwide ground stop and that flights already en route to the US are permitted to land. The airline also said some flights from the US are now being cleared to depart. It is monitoring the situation and will contact affected customers directly. In the meantime, it is telling passengers to keep checking the Aer Lingus flight status and travel updates page rather than heading to the airport on the assumption that things are back to normal.
Can flights to and from the US still operate?
Yes, but only some of them, and nothing has returned to normal yet. The FAA’s advisory told operators that all departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. It also said inbound international flights would be managed on a case-by-case basis. Transatlantic arrivals aren’t automatically turned away, but they aren’t guaranteed a smooth run either.
By 6pm Eastern time, the FAA said the stop was still in effect. It added that flights would be allowed to depart through coordination with its Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia as the en route facilities recover. If you see an Aer Lingus flight leave Boston or New York tonight, that doesn’t mean the outage is fixed. It means the facility handling that route can manage it safely again.
The advisory runs to 11pm Eastern, which is 4am on Saturday Irish time. That end time is an estimate, and the stop could be lifted earlier or extended.
To give a sense of scale, over 4,000 flights were in the air heading for US airports when the stop was issued. All of them needed somewhere to land while almost nothing was taking off. This is also the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a failure in the system that sends safety notices to pilots halted departures for about 90 minutes.
What it means for flights at Dublin and Shannon on Saturday
The bigger knock-on for Irish passengers will probably come on Saturday morning. Most flights from the US land in Dublin and Shannon in the early hours after flying overnight. Any aircraft that doesn’t leave the US tonight won’t be here to operate its return trip in the morning.
Dublin Airport has said there is a possibility that both arriving and departing flights between Dublin and the US could be affected on Saturday morning. Shannon is due to take two early arrivals from Boston and New York at 5.50am and 6.10am. Crew working hours make this worse, because aircrew can only work so many hours in a day. A long delay on the ground in the US can leave a crew unable to fly at all, even once the stop is lifted.
If you’re flying to the US from Ireland on Saturday, check your flight before you leave the house. Don’t assume you’ll be sorted at the airport.
Your rights if your Aer Lingus flight is delayed or cancelled
EU passenger rights rules (EU261) cover Aer Lingus flights from the US to Ireland because Aer Lingus is an EU airline. They also cover every flight departing Ireland. US airlines flying from the US to Ireland aren’t covered on that leg.
An air traffic control failure is generally treated as an extraordinary circumstance, so the fixed cash compensation for long delays is unlikely to apply here. Your right to care still applies. That covers meals and refreshments during a long delay and a hotel if you’re stuck overnight, as well as a choice between a refund or rerouting if your flight is cancelled. Keep your receipts. If you’re not happy with how a claim is handled, the Commission for Aviation Regulation’s guide to air passenger rights is the place to go next.
Was it a cyberattack?
Nothing made public so far points to one, despite this being somewhat vogue. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the stop followed a communication issue affecting all of the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Centres, and that FAA technicians were investigating. Officials described it as a telecommunications outage. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters this was not another 9/11 and said there was no indication of a nefarious attack. However, nobody is ruling anything out until the investigation is done.
The speculation is understandable. A whole country’s departures stopped on a Friday afternoon with very little explanation, and that information gap gets filled quickly online. That said, the evidence available tonight points to a telecoms failure, not a confirmed intrusion.
The AI system, Microsoft and the weather
Some of the online theories focus on SMART, an AI-powered air traffic management system the FAA expanded to all of its en route centres earlier this week. The FAA has denied it caused the ground stop, and Airspace Intelligence, the company behind it, said publicly that the stop was not a result of SMART. Speculative theorists would be forgiven given the uncanny timing. Others pointed to a Microsoft service disruption just before. According to US reports, officials and Microsoft have both said there is no indication the two are linked.
It isn’t the first time the FAA’s telecoms have failed this year. In August, a telecommunications outage briefly halted traffic in airspace run by the Minneapolis control centre. In September, a failed circuit and a damaged backup line at the Philadelphia facility triggered ground stops across the US Northeast. Neither was on tonight’s scale, but questions about how resilient the network is won’t go away after this one.
Reports of a national weather radar outage have also been deunked amid the panic.
How to keep track of your flight
The FAA National Airspace System status page shows live ground stops and delay programmes at US airports. It updates faster than most news coverage, and it’s the clearest way to see whether the stop has been lifted. For your own booking, the Aer Lingus app and website are the place to check, and the airline says it will contact affected customers directly.
Aer Lingus passengers due to travel to or from the US this weekend should check their flight status on aerlingus.com before travelling to the airport.
