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  • 2023-01-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Was 2023 the First Time Since 9/11 that the FAA Grounded All US Flights? (en)
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  • On Jan. 11, 2023, Fox News published the headline, FAA orders all flights grounded for the first time since 9/11. Hours earlier, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had ordered a pause of all domestic departures due to what was referred to a computer system outage. It's possible that some of our readers were curious if this FAA order truly was the first time that all U.S. flights had been grounded since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a day when terrorists hijacked four airplanes and killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Two of the airplanes crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, which both collapsed soon after. A third plane struck the Pentagon. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and was the only one of the four hijacked aircraft that failed to reach the terrorists' intended target that day, thanks to the unity, courage, and defiance in the face of adversity that was shown by passengers and crew, according to NPS.gov. While the January 2023 pause of all domestic departures was very rare, it was still different than what occurred on 9/11. The main difference here was that flights already in the air were permitted to land at their destinations. In contrast, on 9/11, all flights were grounded, meaning U.S. airspace had been ordered to be closed, with already-departed aircraft being ordered to land at the nearest possible airport. As for the pause of departures, The Washington Post quoted a former FAA official who could not recall another time since 9/11 when so many flights had been impacted by any such order: The Associated Press (AP) also mentioned the somewhat historic nature of the FAA's pause of domestic departures: Beyond these two reports, we were not yet able to find any other dates between 9/11 and January 2023 when any such pause order had been given by the FAA on a nationwide scale. We reached out to the FAA's press office to ask about the rumor and will update this story if we receive an official response. As for the outage in January 2023, the AP published that the White House said there were no initial signs of a cyberattack. U.S. President Joe Biden also told reporters that the U.S. Department of Transportation was investigating. According to the AP, the cause of the outage initially looked to have been an antiquated computer system: CNN.com and others later reported that a corrupt file was to blame. This story will be updated if we further information comes to light. (en)
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