Nationwide ground stop: LIVE from PHL and STL airports

Breaking news, the Federal Aviation Administration issuing a rare nationwide ground stop. Flights halted all across the country tonight due to unspecified extraordinary circumstances and for what the FAA is calling reasons of safety. No word yet on how long this ground stop will last, but until it does, no flights are taking off. Anywhere in the country. This is the news at six. I'm Dawn Timoney. As you can imagine, this is causing a serious ripple effect all across the entire United States. This is a live look at FlightAware. You can see where aircraft are across the country right now. And while we don't know exactly what caused this, Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen says there's no indication of any kind of nefarious act, calling it a telecommunications outage. The last time a nationwide ground stop took place was in January of 2023 after a pilot notification system went down. This is only the second time since 9/11. Let's get out to our Shaunette Wilson at Philadelphia International Airport. Shaunette, what can you tell us? Well, Don, we're hearing telecommunications problems as it relates to air traffic control. And we know that their job, of course, is to control planes as they are in the air to prevent collisions. And so, as you mentioned, this is a ground stop across the country. We're told no flights are leaving airports across the United States. You can see the boards here. We've been watching them. They're not really updated because they are showing flights that are on time. And we know that this is not happening. There are passengers still arriving. Who are thinking that they are getting out tonight or maybe, you know, we're already in route when they found out about this. Are you all going out on a flight? OK, quick question. I'm Shaunette Wilson with Fox 29. We're live on the air right now. OK, nice to meet you. How did you hear about this? When or what? Both. Oh, we heard just as we were on the train from New York City, like, we're meeting our daughter here, and we just heard that there were no flights going out, but we're not going to, like, leave our kids. So, yeah, we heard there are no flights going out. Everything's down, maybe due to a computing problem. So your daughter was, where is she? She goes to school in Pennsylvania, to a boarding school. So we're meeting her, trying to take her to a tournament, but I don't know if that's going to happen. What time was your flight supposed to be at? It's supposed to be at 8:14 p.m. So currently it shows it's delayed about an hour. That seems very optimistic, I would say so. Have you reached out to the airline yet or kind of just waiting to see? No, we just got here and we're just looking and we see that it's still the flight from before that is up on the screen. So we're not very optimistic. What was your first reaction when you heard this? Um, oh. Oh shoot, I hope it's not a terrorist attack, basically, it was our first thing. And I hope we can find our daughter. Yeah, because this is the third time. The last time was in 2023. There was a problem with the pilot notification system. And, of course, we know 9-11. Of course. Yeah, no, it's very scary. We're New Yorkers. So, yeah, we hope. And all Americans, everybody in the whole world, it's scary stuff. So where is your daughter now? On the way here, we hope. Yes. Okay. You will find her. Yes. What's your name? Natalia. Thank you so much, Natalia. Thank you. So you just heard, you know, again, people are showing up. They received the notification, but if you're already on the way, you're coming here and you're trying to be optimistic that maybe your flight will get out. But again, no flights leaving. We were hearing or being told earlier that, you know, flights that were in the air would be landing and that international flights that were in the air, you know, would be handled on a case-by-case basis. No activity here as far as flights going out. I did speak with a woman, and we'll hear a little bit from her when we come back a little later on, but she was on a flight. With her 15-month-old baby, she said that two hours ago, they actually boarded their plane here at PHL. And she said as soon as they got on, that's when, you know, they got the notification. She said they sat on the plane for about an hour, and then they were actually, you know, they were told to leave the plane. So she said that, you know, they didn't get any information on, you know, could this flight go out tonight? Would it be canceled completely? She said she was told they could wait around, but with the 15-month-old already sitting on a plane for an hour, That, you know, she had decided just to go home and they would figure out what to do with this flight that is not going to happen for them tonight. So it seems that passengers we've been talking to are in pretty good spirits. You know, they're waiting for answers just as we all are. Transportation Secretary. Sean Duffy had tweeted earlier that technicians are investigating the issue, but again, we're hearing a problem with the telecommunications system as it relates to air traffic controllers, and that is the reason why no flights are taking off from airports across the country. We have reached out to officials here with PHL. We have not heard back as of yet, but according to FlightAware, which we heard Don talking about earlier, it was listing that about 300, 309 flights here at PHL were being affected by that. Again, we're waiting for official confirmation from the airport, but you can see, we'll give you a quick look around again, that, you know, there are people here, and, you know, they seem like they're, you know, handling this in stride. I also had a chance to talk to a flight attendant with United Airlines, and he told me... You know, that he, of course, reported to work, but he said that they were going to get a briefing at 6 o'clock as to, you know, what they are supposed to do and what they are telling passengers. But, you know, he's a flight attendant. You know, he was expected to be here and be, you know, in the air on a flight, but we know that's not happening. So, Some passengers frustrated just because, you know, you come all the way here and you get the notification, you don't know what to do. But as Dawn, you said, officials are saying that this is out of safety, that this is happening. And so we are in a wait and see pattern here. Right. Out of an abundance of caution. And the woman you spoke to with the young child, I think she's lucky because we're hearing of some people sitting on the runway in planes for hours and hours waiting for buses to pick them up and take them back to the terminal. So it's gonna obviously have a ripple effect too. Yeah, I was totally surprised when she said that even after an hour that they let them off the plane because, you know, we know if you fly most times when you're on, you're really on for a much longer time than that. Once they, you know, board, they usually don't let you off unless the flight is completely canceled. And she said she wasn't told that it was canceled, but she said they did let them off. And her specific airline was sending help for people to get their luggage and everything. So some people are waiting it out. Like you just heard the woman, Natalia, say that they were meeting their daughter here. To fly home, they're trying to be hopeful that, you know, this whole thing will get fixed. But some people said, you know what, we'll just go home. We'll figure out vouchers and flights and all that later. All right. Yeah. And the seriousness of it. Yeah. And I think it's going to take a long time to fix this once they even figure out what went wrong. Shawna, thank you. We will check in with you a little bit later on this evening. Appreciate it. We want to get out to Fox's Olivia on a call me. She is in St. Louis at Lambert International Airport. Paint a picture for us, Olivia. Yeah, John, this is a scene at what you're going to be seeing across the country here with people just really confused people that are missing their flights. And because this is the day of the week that it is, these are weekend flights. A lot of these folks are taking or to make it to a game tomorrow. And a lot of them are wondering, do I have to cancel my events over the weekend? I'll show you just some of the people here that have just been Honestly, waiting around to figure out what's next. You can see a lot of people making calls to friends and family, making other arrangements. I talked to one woman who she was heading to Las Vegas. She said that she and her mom friend, their moms, they don't get out a lot, and they were really, really excited for this trip. Not only that, they were going to be using timeshare points, so now they're feeling like they're losing out on their flight points and their timeshare points, and it's just a big bummer there. And she says it just keeps getting delayed and delayed that ETA on when they. I think that it will be back, and again, I'm outside of the security area too, so people are deciding whether or not it's worth it to even go through security in TSA right now because all of this is up in the air. And I also talked with some folks here that are just deciding to drive. Mind you, I'm in St. Louis, and these two folks that I talked to are driving all the way to Atlanta. So it is not a close drive here, but they're like, we don't want to chance it. You know, we can drive and know when we're going to get there rather than this just being a situation where we're hearing there's a delay. We don't even know what time that this will all wrap up. Dawn. And they could be they could be stuck there all weekend. We don't know because obviously this is going to have a cascading effect. Thank you. And it's at airports all across the country. It's not just your airport or the airport in Atlanta. It's all over the country. So it's going to be chaos. All right. Olivia Anacomis, thank you so much. Appreciate it.