Today's order halting flights at every US airport is only the second nationwide ground stop the FAA has imposed since the 11 September 2001 attacks, according to Flying Magazine and the Daily Beast.
The previous one came in January 2023, Flying Magazine reports, after the failure of the Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) system. The Daily Beast says that on that occasion the FAA paused domestic departures for less than two hours over the system outage.
The Daily Beast reports that the current stop took effect at 3.54pm ET on Friday and is scheduled to remain in effect until 11pm.
One point of caution on the record. The web address of the Daily Beast's article describes this as the first such grounding since 9/11, but the body of its own report, like Flying Magazine, counts the January 2023 stop as the earlier instance. On the two outlets' own accounts, 'second' is the accurate description.