DHS Secretary Says No Sign of Attack Behind Nationwide Flight Grounding

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Thursday there is “no indication” of a “nefarious attack” after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop affecting all U.S. airports.

“This was a telecommunications outage throughout FAA,” Mullin told reporters. “Out of abundant of caution we have grounded all the flights, and all the flights are accounted for. As incoming flights, either internationally or the flights that are currently still in the air, we’ll be dealing with those case-by-case. As you can imagine, there will be a priority list as they start coming in. As I will repeat myself, there was no prior indication, there was no indication as of yet, that this was a nefarious attack against us, it’s just a telecommunication outage as of right now.”

Mullin’s remarks came after the FAA issued a blunt order to operators: “ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED.” The full notice read, in part: “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.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the scope of the disruption in a post on X, saying the FAA “issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”

Mullin said his department had fielded a flood of anxious calls as word of the grounding spread. “Of course, through DHS, we’re getting a ton of calls saying, ‘Is this a terrorist attack? Is this a terrorist attack?’ Everybody’s safe,” he said. “There’s is no reason to be concerned about your loved ones if they’re flying or anything like that. I just want to make sure everybody’s at ease about that.”

He added that investigators were not ruling out a cyberattack as a precaution, even though nothing currently points to one. “As we investigate what caused this, you always got to assume that as many cyberattacks that take place, that you make that assumption,” Mullin said. “As of right now, that’s not known. We’re going to continue to work, the first thing we want to do is make sure we restore the communications, we get all the flights on the ground, and then we get back to normal operations.”