Texarkana Regional Airport’s afternoon flight to Dallas sat at the gate for more than three hours Friday and the last arrival of the night was canceled after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered departures stopped at every airport in the country.
The FAA issued the nationwide ground stop Friday afternoon. An agency alert said the order was “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” ABC News reported.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X that the stop followed a communication issue affecting all of the nation’s Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the facilities that direct aircraft flying between airports. “FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” Duffy said.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, speaking outside the White House shortly after 4 p.m. Friday, said all flights are accounted for.
“There was no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us,” Mullin said. “It’s just a telecommunications outage as of right now.”
Mullin said flights still in the air and inbound international flights will be handled case by case, with a priority list as they come in.
The FAA later described the problem as a “temporary telecommunications outage” and said it halted flights out of an “abundance of caution,” CNBC reported. The agency has not named the system that failed or said when departures will resume.
Article continues below
▼ Continue reading
What it means at Texarkana Regional
Texarkana Regional has one airline, American, and one destination, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. That makes DFW the link to everywhere else for local travelers, and DFW is under the same order.
At 5:25 p.m., the airport’s online flight board showed American Flight 4066 to DFW, scheduled to leave at 2:42 p.m., still listed as boarding at Gate 1. Its estimated departure had been pushed back to 5:32 p.m. The plane had arrived from DFW at 2:04 p.m., a few minutes early.
The board did not give a reason for the delay.
TXK Today’s own aircraft tracking receiver, which logs takeoffs and landings at the airport, recorded no departures from Texarkana Regional between 2:27 p.m. and 5:20 p.m. Friday. The American flight to DFW had left between 2:46 and 3:16 p.m. on each of the previous 11 days.
Planes kept landing. A medical helicopter came in at 2:38 p.m., private jets at 3:27 and 3:47 p.m., and a medical flight from Hot Springs at 5:07 p.m.
The last flight of the day, American Flight 3796 from DFW, is scheduled to land in Texarkana at 10:20 p.m. The board listed it as on time through the afternoon. By 5:20 p.m. it was listed as canceled.
The order applies to every U.S. airport, so travelers who planned to drive to Shreveport, Little Rock or DFW to catch a flight Friday face the same hold.
What is and is not stopped
A ground stop holds planes at the airport they are leaving from. It does not close airports, and flights already in the air continue to their destinations.
Airlines had canceled 1,913 flights and delayed 10,494 nationwide as of 5:04 p.m. Central, according to FlightAware figures cited by ABC7. Delays typically continue for hours after a ground stop is lifted, as airlines work planes and crews back into position.
If you are flying tonight or this weekend
- Check your flight with American before you leave for the airport, at aa.com, in the American app or at 800-433-7300.
- Texarkana Regional posts live arrivals and departures at flytxk.com. The airport’s main number is 870-774-2171.
- If you are connecting through DFW, expect rebooking lines. American’s app usually offers new flights faster than the counter does.
- Picking someone up? Confirm the flight actually left its origin before you head out.
How rare this is
Friday’s order is the second nationwide ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to ABC News. The other came in January 2023, when the FAA system that sends safety notices to pilots failed overnight and departures were held for part of a morning.
This is a developing story. It was last updated at 5:30 p.m. Friday with the canceled evening flight, the FAA’s description of the outage and new flight counts.