A runway equipment failure triggered a ground stop at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Sunday morning, causing cascading delays across one of the world's busiest air travel hubs. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all flights bound for Atlanta from the East Coast starting at 10:40 a.m. Eastern Time, citing the outage as the cause.
"Departures to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International are grounded due to equipment outage," the FAA said in an initial statement. Arriving flights were also affected, with controllers slowing inbound traffic while technicians worked on the issue. By 12:30 p.m., the FAA lifted the ground stop, but a ground delay program remained in effect.
"There is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport," the agency said. "Because a traffic management program is delaying some arriving flights, departing flight schedules may be affected."
As of 1 p.m. Sunday, over 410 flights had been delayed and five canceled at the Atlanta airport, according to tracking data from FlightAware. Of those, more than 200 were outbound and over 250 were inbound.
The disruption in Atlanta follows a string of recent technical issues affecting air traffic across the U.S. Just two days prior, a power outage at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility led to radar blackouts for Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the New York metropolitan area's busiest airports.
The radar outage on Friday occurred at 3:55 a.m. and lasted approximately 90 seconds. According to the FAA, the incident stemmed from a "telecommunications outage" impacting Area C of the TRACON center, which oversees airspace for Newark and nearby regional airports.
It was the second such blackout at Newark in recent weeks. A similar failure on April 28 knocked out radar and communications for about 60 to 90 seconds. Following that event, several air traffic controllers reportedly invoked "trauma leave," and one unnamed controller told NBC's Tom Costello, "Don't fly into Newark. Avoid Newark at all costs."
During the latest radar failure, controllers allegedly informed a FedEx cargo flight that their screens were down and urged the crew to lobby their company to push for infrastructure improvements. A private jet was told to maintain altitude above 3,000 feet as controllers could not ensure contact during descent.
The wave of disruptions has added pressure to an already strained aviation system grappling with staffing shortages. The Trump administration has blamed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies for recent mishaps and pledged to remove DEI initiatives from the FAA. President Donald Trump linked these efforts to the January midair collision at Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people.
Since January 2025, the National Transportation Safety Board reports 36 aviation incidents resulting in at least 143 fatalities across the U.S., prompting renewed scrutiny of air traffic control reliability and federal oversight.
