FAA grounds flights nationwide due to ‘extraordinary circumstances’; at least some flights within Alaska exempt

Alaska Airlines and Alaska Seaplanes still flying in-state routes Friday afternoon, but Lower 48 flights cancelled; Homeland Security head says stop will be prolonged, terrorism not the cause

Juneau International Airport on Oct. 16, 2025. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Mark Sabbatini

Juneau Independent

This is a developing story.

A ground stop at all U.S. airports was ordered shortly before noon on Friday by the Federal Aviation Administration due to "extraordinary circumstances" and "reasons of safety." However, at least some flights within Alaska are exempt from the restriction.

"It still seems very subjective, but they're letting anything within the state fly (under Instrument Flight Rules)," Juneau International Airport Manager Andres Delgado said at about 2 p.m.

An Alaska Airlines flight from Juneau to Anchorage was still scheduled to depart Friday afternoon, although flights to the Lower 48 are being cancelled, he added.

Andy Kline, marketing manager for Alaska Seaplanes, said the halt isn’t affecting his company’s flights between Southeast communities.

"Our air traffic control tower here in Juneau has told us that since we're flying only within Alaska that we can continue flying, so we're still flying," he said.

Capital City Fire/Rescue Chief Tom Hatley told the Juneau Independent that medevac flights within Alaska are still allowed, but not from Alaska to the Lower 48.

An initial FAA announcement declared "All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice," but inbound domestic flights were still being allowed to land.

A subject message by the FAA shortly after 1 p.m. notes "There has been a temporary telecommunications outage — out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted. Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis."

The stop is not due to a terrorist attack, U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, told reporters. However, he also said it will take an extended period of time to fix the issues grounding flights.

“This isn’t going to just be resolved and turned around within the hour,” he said. “This is this is going to take some time. But once again, everybody is safe. Flights are accounted for, and there should be no fear to the public at all.”

The last nationwide ground stop was in January 2023 when a pilot notification system went down, according to CNN. The last time prior to that was after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

CNBC reported the issues for Friday’s ground stop "were related to communications and radar issues, according to an internal message from Alaska Airlines" seen by the network.

Other news media reports noted the US air traffic ⁠control system has been suffering equipment and communications failures due to aging infrastructure, as well as employee shortages. The FAA has been implementing a new AI model into its system, but it was not known Friday afternoon if that is related to the problem.

The tracking site FlightRadar24 noted more than 1,000 aircraft were bound for U.S. airports amid the nationwide ground stop, according to The New York Times. The flight tracking app Flighty reports more than 30,000 departures and arrivals were scheduled for the remainder of the day when the stop occurred.

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.