US flight mayhem continues as result of nationwide shutdown

Over 1,500 flights are cancelled today.

All flights in the US were grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on November 13 and are not expected to return to normal scheduling until later today.

The alert was issued by the FAA with routine maintenance gone awry being cited as the reason for the shutdown.

According to FlightAware, as of last night, over 6,400 US flights were cancelled and more than 8,000 were delayed; following around 9,200 cancelled and 7,500 delayed flights on Friday.

Furthermore, according to the aviation website, 1,572 flight scheduled for today have been cancelled.

In Friday's alert, the FAA said: "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."

Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare and are only issued in emergencies.

The last one was issued in 2023, when a pilot notification system went down.

The only other time a nationwide groundstop was issued was during the 9/11 terror attacks.

John F. Kennedy International Airport. Image: Adobe Stock.

What is a groundstop?

A groundstop is an order issued by an aviation body which grounds all flights in a designated area.

It effectively stops all planes from taking off, while most planes already in the air can continue flying to their intended destination.