FAA Nationwide Ground Stop - 3D Replay in God’s Eye View

Watch the U.S. skies clear out in a 34 second timelapse in God's Eye View. Pulls together public ADS-B, geostationary satellite imagery, FAA advisories and ATC audio. - Blue = planes in the air - Orange = planes on the ground - Rings = aircraft piling up at each airport, with the count beside it What we know based on advisories and tonight's White House briefing: - This is the longest nationwide ground stop since 9/11. - Started at Chicago O'Hare at ~3:10 PM ET with "comms issues" - Soon after radar & radio instability spread to air traffic control centers nationwide - Wasn't a complete blackout. Sec. Duffy says old analog switches and routers got overloaded, leaving controllers with intermittent radio and radar, so the FAA stopped departures. - DHS Sec. Mullin says patches installed during an equipment upgrade are the primary suspect. Essentially "the new technology… was overwhelming the older system." - No evidence yet of a cyberattack, though DHS hasn't ruled out either yet. Notably, Sec. Duffy says the FAA's new AI routing tool (SMART) didn't cause it. - More than 3.5K planes were in the air, and every departure nationwide was stopped at 3:54 PM ET - The stop was lifted at 8:19 PM ET after about 4.5 hours, with 6.6K+ flights canceled and 8.6K delayed (per Flightradar24). This is a wild 4D reconstruction to see. Much respect to the controllers and pilots who kept everyone safe while working with degraded capabilities.