Ground stop issued at all airports across United States

Breaking news. Major breaking news on this Friday. All flights across the United States are grounded at this hour. The FAA issuing an emergency ground stop. That means no flights can take off from any airport in the United States. Officials are saying it is because of a communications issue with all air traffic control centers. Thanks for joining us at 5. I'm Jack Royer. And I'm Luanne Sorrell. This is only the third time that this has ever happened in U.S. history. We want to get right out to Larissa Leone. She is live at Orlando International Airport tonight with the details there. So Larissa, what are things looking like there at MCO right now? Well, Luann, Jack, it's pretty typical for people to congregate in front of these boards, but right now people are really scurrying about. As you can see, a lot of delays. Pittsburgh, Portland, this whole board right here is pretty red. There are some that still say on time, but the only other thing that it says on these boards is landed. So a lot of people here are telling us that they still don't really know what's going on. Of course, we've gotten the information, so they're still figuring out by the minute. And I have a couple of those people with With me right here today you were We're talking about your friend. Tell everybody what your name is here. Hi, my name's John. Grand Rapids, Michigan. Awesome, awesome. Talk to me a little bit about some experiences your friend had on a plane. Yeah, no problem. So I've got a friend on a plane in Charlotte and they just went back to the gate. The captain had announced that he had heard from the FAA or one of the authorities the ground stop was going to be until midnight. So we're just getting ahead of it, getting a hotel room for the night. There's nothing between here and Grand Rapids, Michigan. We have to stop in Atlanta. At midnight, there's nothing in Atlanta, so we're going to stay in beautiful Orlando for another night. It is very beautiful. Now, this is unprecedented. How do you feel about knowing that this was a communications and a safety issue that caused this? Well, I'm glad that they shut it down. I mean, we want to be safe when we're flying in the air. Who knows what's going on with everything we've heard over the last couple weeks, but I'm glad our team's working on it, and better safe than sorry. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. And Nikki over here. Nikki, you had a flight at 4. Talk to us about it. Yeah, it was delayed originally, so I got here around 4:15, and at the same time, my mom called me and said that there was a ground delay, but there hasn't, I haven't heard any like official word. I don't think they've made an announcement here, unless I missed it, and they're still checking bags, they're still taking people through security, so I'm not really sure what to do from here, so in the meantime, I'm just kind of like hanging out. And Nikki, where are you from then? From New York, I'm headed to New York City, yeah, I was supposed to be headed home tonight, hopefully still will, but I don't really know. And what are your plans if maybe that doesn't happen? I guess we'll figure it out. My parents live here, so I guess I will head back. My sister was like waiting in the parking lot for a while, but I told her to go home, but I don't really know. And you've been staying around the boards a little bit. What has the conversation kind of been like? A lot of people frantically on the phone calling their loved ones, right? Yeah, a lot of people are on the phone, not really sure what to do. None of the, I mean, understandably, but none of the like employees here have any more information, so it's... really unclear where to go from here at this point. Yeah, there's still a lot that we don't know about this. Nikki, thank you for talking to us. We're going to keep our pulse on the people here as well as that board. I want to give you another look at it too. We see Denver delayed, Houston, Los Angeles. Lancaster, just a lot of delays on the board. And, of course, no time, time will tell, I should say, to see when things will be cleared up or if this will be lifted. But for now, I'll send it back to the desk. Yeah, a lot of people have questions right now. Larissa, thank you. And as we said, this is happening all across the country. So all planes are grounded. And T.J. Springer is here with us now looking at the map across the country at these major airports affected right now, T.J. Yeah, Jack and Lou, delays certainly mounting across the nation. As we mentioned, extraordinary circumstances. The first time back in 2001 during the terror attacks and back in 2023 with a pilot notification system causing issues across the country and you can see there, at least at a lot of our big airports across the country just to hit a few where pretty quickly New York City, you can see New York City now 170 delays, and this is just some of the mounting delays across the nation. Nearly 1,200 delays, 22 cancellations, and again, I'm sure as time goes on through the remainder of the evening, going to see more of that happening. Going down to Atlanta, not too far away from us here at home in the Orlando Metro. 76 delayed there, heading westbound toward Dallas. 102 delays so far as we head closer to the west coast. Now 65 in Denver as we head out toward LAX. You can see a 96 delayed there in Seattle, one of the first spots to notice all of this happening here as this unfolded from the FAA earlier on this afternoon, now at 24 delays. So we're going to keep tabs on this closely through the remainder of the evening, and hopefully we'll get more people out and off the ground as quickly as we can here, guys.