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E X X ➠A L E R T S Verified account @ExxAlerts · 6h

ALERT: Just two months ago, Secretary Sean Duffy showed off the new “SMART” air traffic management tool.

This week, that tool was implemented.

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Mark Halperin Verified account @MarkHalperin · 5h

Gotta ask: if the federal government learned that the air traffic stoppage was the result of a cyber attack, would they announce it — and how?

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Chris Martenson Verified account @chrismartenson · 7h

The nationwide airplane ground halt is reportedly due to a "rolling frequency outage." Here's how Grok explains that:

How ATC radio works
Controllers primarily communicate with aircraft on specific VHF (and sometimes UHF) radio frequencies. Each sector or facility is assigned particular frequencies. Pilots tune their radios to the correct one so they can receive clearances, instructions, and traffic information, and so controllers can hear the pilots.⁠Hindustantimes

A frequency outage occurs when those radio links stop working properly—controllers cannot reliably transmit to or receive from aircraft on the affected frequency(s). This can result from failed transmitters/receivers, problems with the telecommunications circuits that connect remote radio sites to control centers, equipment failures, aging infrastructure, or interference. Systems normally have backups (main and standby radios, alternate frequencies), but when multiple channels or sites fail, controllers lose the ability to manage traffic safely.⁠Dataprobe

What “rolling” adds
“Rolling” indicates the problem is not limited to one facility or one frequency. It is affecting multiple air traffic control centers across different parts of the country, often spreading or cascading rather than striking everywhere at once. In the Friday incident, internal notices referred to a “rolling frequency outtage in multiple centers,” later described as “widespread frequency outages” and impacts to ATC frequencies (and in some reports, radar capabilities) across numerous centers.⁠Clashreport

It reportedly began with localized issues (for example, Chicago-area facilities citing “comms issues” / equipment outage) and expanded enough that the FAA imposed a rare nationwide ground stop on departures “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” Aircraft already in the air could continue and land; new departures were halted to avoid adding more traffic while communications were unreliable. Inbound international flights were handled case-by-case. An FAA source described the scale as “absolutely unheard of.”⁠Clashreport

Why it matters
Without reliable radio contact, controllers cannot issue real-time instructions or confirm what pilots are doing. Isolated frequency problems happen with some regularity because of aging systems, but a broad, multi-center event of this kind is exceptional and triggered the second nationwide departure ground stop in recent history (the prior one was the 2023 NOTAM system outage; before that, post-9/11).⁠CNN

In short: pilots and controllers temporarily lost the primary voice channels needed to keep planes separated across large parts of U.S. airspace, so the system stopped launching new flights until the frequencies could be restored.

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The Hormuz Letter Verified account @HormuzLetter · 7h

BREAKING: FAA issues nationwide ground stop across the United States, with all flight departures halted.

All airborne ATC communications across the United States are experiencing technical issues, the FAA says.

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