FAA issues ground stop for aircraft across the U.S.

We have some breaking news from the United States. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has issued a nationwide ground stop due to what it calls extraordinary circumstance and reasons for safety. The CBC's Darren McCaffrey is following this for us. So, Darren, what do we know about this ground stop? Yeah, quite extraordinary and is clearly going to cause an awful lot of disruption for an awful lot of travellers, not just in the United States, but indeed here in Canada and around the world. This is what... The advisory says, as we look at Reagan Airport there in Virginia, this is what the Federal Aviation Authority in the United States issued relatively recently, saying, due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety, attention all aircraft operators by order of the Federal Aviation Command Centre. All airports are grounded, stopped. All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case-by-case basis, i.e. there are no flights allowed to depart from, it seems, any airport in the United States at the moment. Quite extraordinary that. And that any aircraft that is in the air from outside the United States, I assume, will be allowed to land, I would have thought, but on a case-by-case basis. Peter Snow. What do we think is behind this? It does seem to be due to communication issues. That seems to be confirmed in the last couple of minutes by the U.S. Transport Secretary, essentially saying that there does seem to be radio communication issues, I assume between air traffic control and planes themselves, or certainly between different air traffic controls in the United States. Now, this is... Pretty rare, Andrew, it seems to be. I mean, we've just briefly looked about when this may well have happened before. Of course, it very famously happened on 9-11 and the days that followed when there was a nationwide ground stop then. We think there was one back in 2023, but we're talking about a couple of times in the last couple of decades. And just to give you a sense of the scale of what this impact might well be, if it... If it lasts, we don't know how long this may well last, but there are roughly around 45,000 flights which are managed by the FAA or essentially in the United States at any given day. You can already see the disruption that is happening here with flights delayed. And that carries around 2.9 million passengers per day. So that is a lot of people who could be affected if this was to continue. Air Canada, for example, the United, they coordinate over 260 trans-border flights on any given day. So this is going to have a major impact. It seems to be communication issues. But at the moment, all planes in the United States are not being allowed to take off. Not being allowed to take off. And in terms of, they haven't really said about arrivals, about planes that are in the air. I mean, frankly, the last time. We really remember this was in 9/11 and all the flights that were inbound were diverted here. Some diverted to Gander, you're right. I mean, very famously to Gander in Newfoundland. I think ultimately, as it said in that statement, it will be a case-by-case basis. There will be certain aircraft who may well be low on fuel, who may have to land. Others, you're right, though, may be diverted. So we have to wait and see. I mean, this has just happened in the last couple of minutes. But again, quite an extraordinary moment that is going to lead to lots of disruption. All right, Darren, thank you. CBC's Darren McCaffrey.