Homeland Security Sec. Mullin: President Trump has been briefed on nationwide ground stop

The FAA halted all U.S. flights in a rare nationwide ground stop after a communications problem hit multiple air route traffic control centers. Phil Lebeau said the agency framed it as a temporary telecommunications outage and stressed that it was an abundance-of-caution move while technicians investigated. The immediate operational effect was to hold aircraft that had not yet taken off, while flights already in the air were being handled case by case.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters the president had been briefed and that federal agencies were coordinating on the response. He repeatedly said the public should not treat the event like 9/11 or assume there was an immediate safety threat, while also declining to rule out possibilities such as a cyber issue or an AI-related error. He said the government did not yet know the root cause or how long the outage would last.

Lebeau added that the FAA had not confirmed any cyberattack and that the situation could take hours to resolve. He noted that the agency only takes this step when it believes there is a serious safety issue, and that the key unknowns were what caused the outage and when normal operations would resume.