https://www.wsj.com/us-news/faa-temporarily-halts-flights-ac...
> The outage appears to be affecting a telecommunications network overseen by L3Harris Technologies, according to people briefed on the matter. The network handles crucial radio frequencies that air-traffic controllers use to communicate with pilots, the people said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the outage also affected the radar feeds that controllers use to keep aircraft safely separated in the skies.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/faa-issues-nationwide-ground-st...
> An update to the private communications network that connects America's air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, leading to a crash and a communications outage, multiple sources told CBS News. The system is operated by L3Harris, which did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment.
And that's why you never deploy to prod on a Friday.
Looking at LAX departures, it looks like nothing has departed since about 10:30 AM PST, and everything later is showing Delayed or Cancelled. There are times after Delayed, but it's not clear those times mean anything. Some are now in the past.
"flysfo.com" is too overloaded to display departures. Stuck at "loading...".
JFK departure status shows almost solid "Delayed".
No good explanations anywhere.
flights departing hawaii and alaska are also allowed
Economy taking a lot of crazy hits this week. They're footgun hits too, not even enemy action.
Edit: ok so one of them was maybe a little bit enemy action.
Probably someone prompted an agent: solve global CO2 emissions :-)
5 days from now? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50465829
Maybe look further than Twitter.
The legitimate media from the New York Times to CNN and beyond all showed video of Markwayne Mullin's news conference 20 minutes before your post.
All is well, this is not the AIpocalypse. Just some dude fucking up something stupid, as usual.
Update before I can no longer edit:
> The Federal Aviation Administration told airlines the nationwide outages that prompted the ground stop were the result of a problem with network routers, according to an airline source.
> The problem is believed to have started at Chicago Midway International Airport and cascaded nationwide.
If there was an attack on your country, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing, just like it did 9/11.
All I am getting is pictures of baked cookies right now. So there is no attack on your country.
Planes are not falling out of the sky, as you can see on publicly available platforms. Nothing is exploding on the ground, besides the poor souls choosing Taco Bell for dinner.
I am confident you will not be abducted or murdered by Aliens today either, pinky promise.
So whatever happens is not an immediate danger to the planes still in the air. And no danger to anyone on the ground.
The most simple explanation is that the communication between ground and air is not working properly, and as this is necessary to safely fly thousands of planes simultaneously, they should rather stay on the ground for safety reasons until they figure out what is wrong.
If you have any specific concerns not addressed above, feel free to share them.
> The agency wrote on Nov. 10 that after the D.C. test, it will “now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country to reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public.” The tech was already being deployed at some airports.
https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...
"The FAA in June awarded Boston-based startup Air Space Intelligence a contract — worth up to $875.9 million — for an AI-powered tool to help air traffic controllers manage the nation’s skies and a related system for an FAA nerve center in northern Virginia to better handle plane congestion. The AI platform’s initial launch in the Washington area has sparked concern among Democrats in Congress who say it should be put on pause until they have a better understanding of how it’s being deployed."
"Over two dozen lawmakers have called on the FAA to pause its 90-day evaluation period for the platform, which began late last month in the Washington region. They say there’s been an “egregious lack of transparency.”"
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/faa-stake-ai-compan...
Feels like somebody was pushing their preferred company for a government contract and now is push for the government to invest.
Is this more common than I realize in US executive deparyments and agencies?
> The FAA has reassured the public and airlines that SMART only suggests routes and doesn't affect air safety.
That's just a scenario off the top of my head, it could be a lot of stuff. Plugging something new into an old, complicated system isn't risk free.
The destructive & arrogant behaviors won't be reigned in properly if we all fail to recognize that, just FTR.
The Trump twist is being brazen enough that those who get these contracts can just be his family members or buddies, but otherwise, pretty standard.
“NATCA believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System,” the union said in a statement.
Seems like there are three plausible causes right now given the extremely limited communication from the govt.
1. The AI system rolled out yesterday had more access than publicly claimed and managed to break things.
2. The ongoing large scale equipment upgrade went wrong.
3. General incompetence from a department run by an unqualified realty show actor, within an administration that is actively hostile to expertise and experience in the federal workforce.
What could go wrong really...
Botched rollout of AI for ATC ...
or
Rollout of botched AI for ATC.
It sure didn't that long after every dev on earth started using LLMs for everything to turn to shit, so one may wonder...
Its more than likely that system is just created by some Trump donor and was purchased by the FAA to launder public funds to some company that Trump owes a favor too. Its not actually integrated with anything.
yeah... sounds about right.
Is there any evidence for this beyond a single statement from the govt? This administration hasn't exactly developed a reputation for fully accurate and truthful reporting.
> “This isn’t going to just be be resolved and turned around within the hour"
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a519b8
It's Delta Airlines flight 1070
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL1070
Edit: It landed safely. Continuing to watch our airspace clear out, most traffic at 40,000+ feet is inbound international flights
It's eerie seeing the total number of aircraft tracked decrease. I put on a filter for 1000' to 80000', to exclude aircraft on the ground, and the number was around 12K when I started watching. It's down to just over 9.4K now. Wild.
Edit: 22 minutes later and the count is down to 8.4K.
edit: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...
ATCSCC Advisory
ATCSCC 111 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONAL GROUND STOP
EVENT TIME: 13/2053 - 14/0400
DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY.
ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION
COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED. ALL DEPARTING
TRAFFIC SHOULD REMAIN GROUND STOPPED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. INBOUND
INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS WILL BE MANAGED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.13/2053
?
You'd say "Valid from the thirteenth at two zero five three zulu" over radio.
Unrolling these decisions is a monumental task given the decades of hardware already deployed in the field that will only be upgraded when the current unit fails.
And with 1960s technology, this might just have been a very reasonable decision.
Between the sectors administered by [smaller towers] are 20 contiguous areas of US airspace above 18,000 feet, each managed by an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC)...
A flight is handed off from one Center to another until it descends near its destination, when control is transferred to the TRACON serving the destination, and ultimately to the tower controller serving the airport.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_control_center
EDIT: someone below posted this, seems relevant -- the 'Radar multiplexer pipeline' that's on a "fast track" and an "aggressive track": https://www.sunhillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SUN3125-... TL;DR: upgrading radio systems from old analog tech to new digital tech, I think?
VZW and AT&T are moving full tilt in shutting down landline central offices.
Literally the gay dude from Airplane pulling the plug from the socket may have happened here.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/lost-radio-contact-leaves-pilots-o...
(I was near ORD at the time, flying toward the outage area. We diverted to ORD, and the pilot was very friendly about it.)
At the time I thought it was Microsoft's fault, as Windows 95 and 98 were susceptible to crashing when GetTickCount() overflowed, and this ATC crash was due to a 32-bit millisecond counter on a Windows machine overflowing, but in this particular instance the system was apparently not running on a version of Windows with this particular bug and the failure was just an application error.
Aren't computers great? :)
I remember hearing of a fighter a long time ago whose autopilot flipped out when it crossed the equator, due to sin(latitude) becoming negative.
Let go of software dev; as is a mechanical task from the 60s-70s
Cultural memory begets cultural conservatism
This is why there's such an issue with holding power to account nowadays.
To really fuck up, you need a computer.
"Realistically you want fewer, higher-quality engineers who are educated in these tools and treat them with respect and caution. These tools are dangerous and you can’t play around. All it takes is one mistake and the blast radius is way, way larger. One mistake can do so much damage it undos all value of an entire year. Before downloading a malicious dependency was limited to deterministic behavior and could be scanned for. Now, you run a MCP server locally, it can prompt inject (in many different ways), and now your super powerful AI buddy is hacking you in ways a deterministic piece of malware could never. You could cripple entire companies through negligent use." And "And now we are controlling models that can be hacked in so many different ways and literally blow up companies. It used to be accountability the software wouldn’t break. Now it’s accountability that in creating the software we don’t ruin the business."
Not saying this was caused by malicious actors or negligent AI agent usage nor am I saying was the previous Microsoft outage either the above references but it doesn't look great. If our technology is really so brittle, we might be looking at a return to way slower world to put it simply. Maybe no remote work because it gets hacked too easy!
-- some clever person whose name I do not know
> "The government has been working to overhaul the outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year."
> "Duffy has said that another $30 billion will be needed to complete the work, and the White House has begun lobbying Congress to approve it."
[1] https://apnews.com/article/flights-halted-airports-faa-f81b0...
However, this failure mode seems more likely to be caused by digital communication systems and an 'upgrade' (with commercial incentives) to newer technology.
My bet is that if short-wave radio transmission keeps being used, availability will be higher than stuff like Github.
If you don't take full advantage of that, you're missing out on possibly your only opportunity ever to fix whatever's needed fixing for years.
If things blow up because you're upgrading to something supposedly better and it goes wrong, then that's not a time when you can properly fix the new thing. You can only push forward with the transition or go back to the old. I disagree with "you've got nearly a blank check to do whatever's necessary to make sure it never happens again." You have a blank check, but anything you use it for has to be scoped within stopping the bleeding. As soon as you're onto the new or back to the old, the check expires and you likely can't touch anything real anymore because it'll be involved in lawsuits and finger-pointing.
I don't disagree with the core message, but I think it plays out differently for a major upgrade vs a production meltdown on an existing system. With mostly an existing system, you can pour effort into resilience. With an upgrade, I doubt people would let you beef up a system that is still on the chopping block, even if it's getting a life extension. And if you're still switching to the new system, all effort is going to go into getting it up and running and anything that gets in the way of that (as quality improvements are likely to) is going to face some serious resistance. The check is not truly blank.
The FAA et al. have been working to modernize US ATC since ~2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transporta...
The next step is a ton of hardware upgrading, which always costs real money.
I was working on upgrading US ATC in 1995. As were lots and lots of other people.
A lot of very hardworking people getting too little pay for something so critical while their employers (some contracting company) take a lot of profit. Eventually they burn out waiting for help and a replacement system and retire or quit, then the systems really start failing because the knowledge leaves with them.
> Transport Secretary Sean Duffy says the FAA "issued a nationwide ground stop for all US airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.
Godspeed for everyone getting to where they need to be, somehow, or at least ending tonight with a roof over your heads.
edit: we're on approach into Seattle, so apparently we were one of the happy cases of the "case-by-case basis."
Most airliners over the ocean also have inmarsat satphones for the pilots.
“Generally considered,” really? Does that apply anywhere outside of r/conspiracy?
After 1962 there was too much air travel to continue to shut it down for exercises, and NORAD switched to smaller, regional level things that did not shut down air travel after that. But the results of Sky Shield III in 1962 were the only experience that the FAA had to work from when they did the full ground stop after September 11th. Sky Shield III had tested how quickly air traffic control could clear the sky in the event of a nuclear war- the USAF had put up several hundred T-33 trainers, flying them randomly around the US and Canada, and then at a certain point in the exercise the ATC had to get them all on the ground far away from major metropolitan centers (presumed lost in the war).
Update: Starship launched on schedule.
edit: #121 does load eventually:
https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis?adv_date=11132026&a...
The Most Recent ATCSCC Advisory
ATCSCC ADVZY 121 DCC 11/13/2026 REROUTE CANCELLATION
MESSAGE: FC A001:STARSHIP_WEST HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
REMARKS: CANCELS ADVZY 036.
ASSOCIATED RESTRICTIONS:
EFFECTIVE TIME: 132305-140040
SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 23:05I guess if some plane needs to do an emergency detour threw threw that space, but that seems unlikely.
I'm sure there is a reason for it but can they not be a little bit more specific?
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/a-calamity-disrupting-hundr...
"we stuck digital computers into a purely analog pipeline, now with software containing a near-infinite amount of lines of code generated by LLMs, to make sure it's capable of a wide range of harrowing, incomprehensible failures."
And everybody here on HN applauds.
https://www.sunhillo.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SUN3125-... (page 3, bottom graphic)
(all the radars --> multiplexer [sadness here] --> radar data consumers)
Attention: National Radar Outage
Flight Service uses a different set of radios and can relay messages to ATC, but they've been slowly dismantled over the last two decades and wouldn't have the capacity to step in for an outage (nor should they be expected to - that's not their purpose).
Some aircraft have CPDLC for text-based communication, but it's asynchronous and you can't use that as a replacement for voice communication in the terminal environment. Also, many aircraft aren't equipped to receive it.
Pilots are trained on lost comms procedures, so if you're in the air and the radio fails they'd fall back to those regulations. Basically all the aircraft would fly their last assigned clearance, and attempt to deconflict manually with other aircraft over air-to-air radio (similar to flying into an untowered airport).
There are contingencies for radio outages, but yeah, everything going down at once (if that's what's happening here, which I doubt) is bad.
So it falls back to local control, more in the style of visual flight rules. Pilots in existing flights will have to be vigilant and do their own deconflictation and new flights are banned out until the network is back up.
All conjecture at this stage of course, but all the radios won't just fail. It is probably going to be a poster child example about the dangers of large scale integration. The attraction of course is that integration is very efficient, the danger is it tends to fail all at once instead of in smaller pieces.
VFR traffic doesn't necessarily need radio, and is not affected by this groundstop.
Could you in an emergency, if you had no other options? Yes. But ATC can't legally give you a clearance that was dependent on using ADS-B for separation.
(Similarly, if there's a potential traffic conflict, and you tell ATC you see the other traffic on your ADS-B display, they just have to disregard that statement and assume that you can't see the other aircraft at all.)
I would hope that airports keep a battery operated radio + antenna in case of emergency with them, to at least communicate with aircraft within visual range of the airport.
I believe it's all virtualized today
I did a tour of Adelaide airport with Engineers Australia in the 1990s. We visited their obsolete IBM main frame, still running ATC in their computer room. They were tied to it by the certification of the software it was running. Just as you described.
Like if you're ordering a pizza they don't need the story of your day, why you chose pepperoni, or what movie you plan to watch. Somebody else might be interested, but not the pizza guy.
> The Weather Service “has not experienced a disruption to its radar systems today,” said Kim Doster, the spokeswoman.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-national-weather-servi...
I am watching planes stacked up on final approach to land at KBOS as I type. From flight radar 24 they are a mix of foreign and domestic. So incoming flights are clearly being managed here.
Does this imply some potential risk from inbound international air traffic? Or maybe the FAA meant outbound? Something else I am missing?
(Sure, a flight near the Canadian or Mexican border could in theory divert to a Canadian or Mexican airport, but it's unlikely many people on those flights have their passports with them.)
In which case freezing domestic (and the huge amount of load it contributes to ATC) but keeping international normal makes sense.
Of course... the side effect is the "fun" that creates for incoming international flights with domestic connections...
There must be some procedures in place for this - I pretty regularly take domestic (Canadian) flights that pass over the US where I don't carry my passport.
Flight EY8 from Boston to Abu Dhabi https://fr24.com/ETD6PX/429055e2
The intent around the ground stop is to reduce in-air U.S. traffic.
As for asking already airborne flights to turn around, those coming in over the ocean might simply not have a non-US alternate airport available with their fuel remaining, so that's often not an option.
Oceanic flights are planned so that at every point along the route, the aircraft can lose an engine or cabin pressure and still reach a pre-approved diversion airport with enough fuel, with the flight plan marking the points where turning back versus continuing becomes the faster option. If a diversion is needed mid-ocean, the crew offsets from their assigned track and altitude to stay clear of other traffic, then heads to the nearest suitable airport, such as Gander, Keflavik or Shannon over the Atlantic, or Anchorage, Cold Bay or Midway over the Pacific.
Alternate airports are picked based with regards to all kinds of contingencies (many of them meteorological), but "the US closes literally every airport" is not one of them.
So my guess this is what it means "case by case". Some which are close to destination would be manually routed, others will land in different places.
Depending on the nature of the disruption it may be they simply have drastically reduced capacity to handle traffic so landings may be much slower and they'll manage the traffic based on various priorities.
[0]https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...
> [The] FAA also says a D.C.-based team of experts validates findings before they’re ever passed on to air traffic control, and the controllers retain the final decision on whether to accept SMART’s suggestions.
Seems unlikely.
There used to be a lot of invisible gatekeepers in a pre-AI world. At work, everyone can ask their agent to query SQL on databases that they were supposed to use through an application. The application and the security by obscurity(end users didn't know how to connect to the DB nor did they know SQL) were the gate keepers.
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
Under the hypothesis that some under-reviewed AI generated code made it into prod, the situation could be qualified as "engineers are panicking, because they don't know if they are the cause or not"
Is it something else?
(i.e. Unloading to tarmac, buses)
https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/national-weather-se...
This article is very likely misreporting the US National Weather Service radar outage page you can find people reposting elsewhere in this comment section. The NWS page has been updated to say it does not reflect a current issue. Anecdotally, my local NWS weather radar is working fine. Also, weather doppler radar and ATC "radar" are very, very different technologies.
Given that the FAA issue also apparently relates to communications, it does seem like it might be related.
EDIT: Time line doesn’t add up for this. Likely unrelated
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ground-stop-chicago-oha...
>The US National Weather Service said on Friday it was experiencing nationwide internet and communications problems that could prevent users from accessing products on its websites or cause outdated information to be displayed. Technicians were working to resolve the problems as soon as possible, the NWS said in a statement.
Edit) landed pretty uneventfully.
Current as of 1340 PDT:
ATCSCC ADVZY 117 DCC 11/13/2026 ALL CENTERS EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES IMPLEMENTED
MESSAGE:
EVENT TIME: 13/2120 - 14/0500
CONSTRAINED FACILITIES: ZTL
DCC HAS IMPLEMENTED EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES TO 240 MINUTES
FOR ALL ENROUTE CENTERS DUE TO NATIONWIDE COMMS FAILURE.
EFFECTIVE TIME: 132121-140530
SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 21:21 ATCSCC ADVZY 120 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONWIDE GROUND STOP
MESSAGE:
EVENT TIME: 13/2245 - 14/0400
DESTINATION AIRPORT:ALL
FACILITIES INCLUDED: ALL
EXPECT UPDATE:0400Z
REASON: COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE
REMARKS: THE FAA COMMAND CENTER GROUND STOP REMAINS IN EFFECT. AS
ENROUTE FACILITIES RECOVER, FLIGHTS WILL BE ALLOWED TO DEPART
THROUGH COORDINATION WITH THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM COMMAND
CENTER.
EFFECTIVE TIME: 132246-140430
SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 22:46There's a query form for looking up old advisories, and it's not returning anything for the last 15 days.
This will ease the pain of getting things moving again, assuming they fix it by the time the 4hr window passes.
So the flight planning system is having problems.
But also, this is about when the flight plans expire out of the system if they're not activated for departure - so it's saying unused flight plans won't be deleted for 4 hours, so pilots won't have to refile for departure.
Aviation is global, and we still need to interop with countries and airports that still use actual teletype. So the legacy protocols still remain, even though much of it is tunneled over IP links now.
Also: The keyboards used in both airplanes and in ATC facilities are often special reduced-footprint keyboards without shift/caps keys. (They're also often ABC layout rather than QWERTY.) So there's that, too.
However, AFTN (used for disseminating flight plans and weather between ATC facilities) still uses landline modems running TTY-originated protocols.
In the US we've moved moved off AFTN in favor of AMHS/X.400, as have most countries - but my understanding is there's still some last holdouts that haven't fully switched over.
We are experiencing technical difficulties. We apologize for the inconvenience but please check back soon, as we are working to have the issues resolved.
Thank you, FAA Web Operations Team
“FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traffic control”
Gates were quickly full, ground ops to pull empty planes off gates takes quite a while, and about 90 mins later, we are pulling into our scheduled gate.
They don't spend a dollar more than they need to so extra gates for this would be quite the luxury. I guess what they need though is apron space or hangar space for the extra planes and the number of gates won't matter so much.
And I don't see anyone arguing about overall funding, only arguing about who to throw millions or billions of additional dollars at chasing vague ideas of how to improve things based on what politicians and C-suites, who have no experience in the area, claim they can do. To me it looks more like grifting for contracts and kickbacks than any well thought out plans to improve things.
It is a frontpage post. That's where I saw it.
https://status.flyio.net/incidents/01M76HANB3XQC6WYKPA69WQN8...
Edit: screenshot here: https://i.postimg.cc/XqcsDQw9/image.png Edit 2: different link still showing: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...
EVENT TIME: 13/2100 - 14/0300 USERS CAN EXPECT AIRBORNE HOLDING TO ANY AND ALL AIRPORTS WITHIN THE NAS DUE EQUIPTMENT OUTAGES. UPDATES WILL BE ISSUED AS ADITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. EFFECTIVE TIME:
132120-140330 SIGNATURE:
26/11/13 21:20
Edit: end date of tomorrow??? Is that just temporary?
https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...
maybe the last two numbers are a time range for which the thing is effective? and it's over now?
EFFECTIVE TIME: 132054 - 140430
SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 20:54
Insane. It looks like they are showing no advisory on first page view, then advisory? Can others confirm?
> Los Angeles Airport and Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International were among those that were closed, according to a list on the regulator’s website.
> The outages at O’Hare and Midway were listed as “due to equipment outage”.
https://www.ft.com/content/c9b119ff-d1da-46a7-b2b3-4ad0544ff...
If the communications issue is between US ATC regions, this makes sense. The planes are being handed off to other non-US ATCs where there is no communications issue.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vThhccsTanAz...
AI is updating it hourly. Since it is AI, always verify yourself.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...
That tool was first unveiled for the Washington, D.C., area airports two months ago, on a day when problems with air traffic communications failures also grounded hundreds of flights, after a circuit failed and it was discovered that contractors had accidentally ripped through a fiber line that was supposed to serve as its backup.
But I'm completely just spitballing here.
It's actually quite impressive, you have to really try to be so bad at your job of building redundant systems that some failure mode implausibly affects everything nation wide, yet allows Canadian domestic flights to proceed fine.
Weird things happen when you destroy the federal infra, aka the USA.
Am I being hyperbolic? Well, this was the first national ground stop since 9/11... and for what?
https://fedscoop.com/faa-aviation-safety-system-doge-notam/
Did the Starship launch today just ground all flights in the USA? Maybe, maybe not. I am convinced it did. If Elon Musk can take a shred of evidence, or just make shit up, and change domestic and foreign policy, then why can't I?
We obviously live in a simulation after all, what does it matter?
Again, who knows. We can barely make enough Cybertrucks according to demand, the simulation overlords are busy.
A sequence of events:
- Democrats win congress : it sets a clock to act before January
- Jensen is taken out, throwing nVidia into chaos
- Email comms are blacked out for an entire day across government and major enterprises
- Air traffic is stopped nation wide the next day
Trust me I have the instinct as well. The PLA flew like 30 jets into Taiwan's aviation alert zone yesterday so I'm primed for any smell of something worse, but the fact is there's no reason to connect events barring evidence.
effective 2:54PM - 10:30PM central time
ATCSCC Advisory
ATCSCC 111 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONAL GROUND STOP
MESSAGE:
EVENT TIME: 13/2053 - 14/0400
DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY.
ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION
COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED. ALL DEPARTING
TRAFFIC SHOULD REMAIN GROUND STOPPED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. INBOUND
INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS WILL BE MANAGED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.
EFFECTIVE TIME: 132054 - 140430
SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 20:54https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...
"... ground stop is in effect for all destinations until further notice due to rolling frequency outtage in multiple centers..."
and
"... the ground stop is now a nationwide ground stop for all centers, all destinations until further notice due to widespread frequency outtages.. ..."
https://x.com/Anna_Giaritelli/status/2121344915091206311
Which is cited in the Hindustan Times (leading Indian newspaper), which refers to the Twitter source as a journalist.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/faa-issues...
----
(EDIT: @mods / @dang: Around January this year (iirc) somehow my account ended up rate-limited, posts relatively demoted (start low, drop quickly), vouches/flags relatively ineffective, etc. Usually I don't care too much and haven't bothered to do anything about it but it is sometimes annoying - it limits participation - and right now it buries some of the more valuable information in the discussion. Could you look into fixing it? I don't know of a reason this account would be penalized. Thanks.)
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/modern-skies-trumps-transportat...
(from Bloomberg)
You need to wait for the third shoe to drop.
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
Because American infrastructure is modern, well designed, maintained and funded? Because government is competent and rational? I could absolutely believe that would happen.
--- EDIT:
This could just be the first issue that's arisen -- the FAA announced it "is expanding across the nation" on Tuesday. Which could really mean anything.
FAA Announcement: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements
The Ars Technica article behind the Gizmodo one sadly doesn't have more info, either.
It'd be kind of absurd if a read-only integration took down nationwide infrastructure, but A) we've all been there... and B) the gizmodo article does mention they're also trying to phase out floppy disks for some jobs still, which tells me their CI/CD and rollback hygiene might not be top-notch. Hopefully the Real World contestant in charge of our transportation network is on site with a ClaudeCode terminal as we speak!
It does sound pretty deeply integrated, I will say:
SMART is a cloud-based system that centralizes 200 data streams – including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing metrics – into one platform.
Creates **a single shared real-time picture** of schedules, weather, airport capacity, and airspace conditions.
...
Enhances the effectiveness of **existing** FAA air traffic management systems.I could see AI deploying something that just obliterates those systems with requests.
If so we are really speedrunning into idiocracy with AI.
If you agree to their nominal leadership and a 1% tax then they go away and even add you to an honorary galactic charter.
US-bound flight from YYZ. They shut down #2 engine and parked us in inactive runway. Pilot came on and said he was reading something about "ATC radio frequency issue" but has been told by United ops that it'll be cleared in ~30 min from now.
Last time this happened in July it was due to some network handoff issue so maybe there is some fiber cut somewhere? (My friend said last time it was NE corridor Verizon fiber cut.)
- [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-forgotten-operating-syst...
Weather service down.
Frances fridges down.
Microsoft down.
Would they tell us they were getting hacked, if this was a prelude to war ?
Or would they just say "issues yet to be determined" ?
Interesting times ladies and gentlemen.
Or, this is just what everyone that said "dont move everything into the cloud" warned about.
Yeah, probably that. :|
The US is already at war with Iran. France blamed Iran for the fridge hacks too
Everybody knows attacks are coming from Iran and Russia regularly, it's not a conspiracy theory
A freak FUBAR of legacy systems, an unfortunate alignment of circumstances that could have happened anytime.
Pessimistic (paranoid) cases:
1. Intentional hacking by a foreign adversary 2. Vibe coding whoops 3. OpenAI agents "running experiments"
Claude: Transmogrifying…
Shall I stop all trains too?
Cogitated for 50s · done 14:53 PM
Sure smells like something foreboding
> Airlines said flights in the air would continue.
This is a huge relief! phew
The boarded and grounded planes may start disembarking passengers at some point, especially if their crews are hitting their maximum time before mandatory rest. These delays will probably prevent replacement crews from arriving.
Update: https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/faa-issues-nationwide-grou...
Flight EY8 from Boston to Abu Dhabi https://fr24.com/ETD6PX/429055e2
There’s still lower ground telecoms for take off.
https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/1udup2j/trains_hal...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-faa-says-it-will-phase-o...
...so at least it's not something 911-ish
> "FAA expands AI advice to manage air traffic congestion across entire US airspace"
* https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...
> "FAA Is Rolling Out Its AI Air Traffic Tool Nationwide"
* https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...
Also he says he saw a plane taking off LAX so fingers crossed. Still no news though
This also happened on 9/11 which is curious because the NVIDIA thing caused a public rift with Lutnick yesterday:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/bessent-blames-lutnick...
Besides popularity isn’t the determination of whether something is a good idea or not. The Korean War for example was very unpopular yet it was the right and smart thing to do.
Company that created the tool (called Airspace Intelligence) is interesting in terms of demographics for these types of companies - implies lots if the tool 'does not work as designed' (which it will obviously not)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/airspace-intelligence/peopl...
And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.
It looks like the FAA started testing it in DC in September and annouced a nationwide rollout three days ago (https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements). This makes it seem more unlikely to be the cause, though:
A team of FAA specialists in the SMART center in Washington, D.C., analyzes and validates the SMART data and provides scheduling recommendations to the agency’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, VA. The Command Center then routes these recommendations to air traffic control facilities for local leadership to consider.
...And Claude, remember NOT to make NO mistakes.
When we are dealing with the FCC, grounding all flights and radio failures in open bands, you can drive a lot of changes.
There are a lot of pesky ESP32s out there, right? Did your company choose to go with the Espressif platform? You know, the hackable SDR one that crashes planes and clubs baby seals and tries to sell your grandparents bad financial scams?
And then "journalists" "feel" like they have to report on things because as long as they say they're reporting that "someone else had a feeling" they're not technically wrong, and they have bosses breathing down their necks to make the business work, to grow their monetizable audience.
And then no one knows what's true anymore, because we chose to be entertained instead of choosing to be informed.
Mr. President, there's been a second timeline-split.
We detached this flamewar subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50491500.
People talk about competition driving the private sector into total efficiency but when you actually start working in it you start to notice how inefficient they actually do things (and how hard they try to avoid competition).
So how much is Zuckerberg personally responsible for after wasting what, 90 billion on the stupid metaverse?
> That ain't true of the government, and all that "care" and "budgeting" could just as easily be called administrative overhead and bloat.
So just to be clear; if the government tries to do accounting and budgeting, that’s administrative bloat, and if it doesn’t, that’s wasting money with no accountability?
Not that either scenario describes any part of the government I’ve ever seen I'm just illustrating clearly that you’re operating from the perspective of “the government spending money on anything is always waste” irrespective of what the money is being spent on.
I've worked on government contracts. Yes, there are piles and piles of administrative overhead heaped onto everything that gets done (with a material budget).
Can we even call what the government runs on these a ... "budget" with "accountability"? LOL
Goalpost shift. Your original point was that leadership of the private sector is responsible for waste. I’ve shown an example of a CEO wasting unconscionable amounts of money and not being responsible whatsoever.
> I 've worked on government contracts. Yes, there are piles and piles of administrative overhead heaped onto everything that gets done (with a material budget).
I never said there wasn’t. I said the private sector wastes more, with less accountability and shittier justifications.
Also, the only reason you even know that the government wasted any money at all is exactly the bloat you’re complaining about.
> Can we even call what the government runs on these a ... "budget" with "accountability"? LOL
Not really. The debt ceiling is legal wordplay introduced by republicans so they can bitch about democrats spending the country into debt (which is hilarious given debts reliably go up far, far more under republican stewardship). But a state that can print money for the cost of paper (of which the US is basically the only one) simply isn’t subject to a lot of traditional market forces. As we’ve seen with our debt now what, 40 trillion? With only now some meaningful effects on on-the-ground economics.
That’s not to say it never will, of course, but at least through history if you look at how the US operated when it was a functioning state, it’s pretty clear the money is made up and the rules don’t matter to Uncle Sam. His checks always cash and huge swathes of the global economy are constructed in a way that reflects that reality.