Hacker News

SMART developed by ASI and the FAA is pushing to own a portion of the company:

"The FAA in June awarded Boston-based startup Air Space Intelligence a contract — worth up to $875.9 million — for an AI-powered tool to help air traffic controllers manage the nation’s skies and a related system for an FAA nerve center in northern Virginia to better handle plane congestion. The AI platform’s initial launch in the Washington area has sparked concern among Democrats in Congress who say it should be put on pause until they have a better understanding of how it’s being deployed."

"Over two dozen lawmakers have called on the FAA to pause its 90-day evaluation period for the platform, which began late last month in the Washington region. They say there’s been an “egregious lack of transparency.”"

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/15/faa-stake-ai-compan...

Feels like somebody was pushing their preferred company for a government contract and now is push for the government to invest.

AI tech is nowhere near reliable enough to be introduced in such important systems. I find this deeply troubling even if it’s not related to the current issue.

From the very first line of that article:

> The FAA has reassured the public and airlines that SMART only suggests routes and doesn't affect air safety.

The AI prompt misunderstood 'grounding'.

However, the National Air Traffic Controllers Union (NATCA) said it has not been “involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce.”

“NATCA believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System,” the union said in a statement.

That system just makes suggestions and isn't actually integrated in any ATC system. This is a telecom issue.

Its more than likely that system is just created by some Trump donor and was purchased by the FAA to launder public funds to some company that Trump owes a favor too. Its not actually integrated with anything.

They didn't check https://shouldideploy.today before the rollout.

Have they estimated how long it will take before it saves more than it costs?

> Botched rollout of AI for ATC announced yesterday as rolling out nationwide?

Botched rollout of AI for ATC ...

or

Rollout of botched AI for ATC.

It sure didn't that long after every dev on earth started using LLMs for everything to turn to shit, so one may wonder...

Update, 3:00 P.M.: Pacific bound flights are cleared to depart, including Hawaii and Asia.

Surprised there's not been any updates yet. Not even one of this will continue or it is being resolved.

When will we congratulate all the AI companies for this?

Probably someone prompted an agent: solve global CO2 emissions :-)

SFO had delays this morning because of winds. I'm not sure if LA also had bad weather, but SFO had a lot of rain and if you know SFO, you'll encounter a delay if someone sneezes in the direction of the runways.

Info on this is amazingly sparse. Apparently Sec. Duffy posted something on X/Twitter, and that's all the news media have

Maybe look further than Twitter.

The legitimate media from the New York Times to CNN and beyond all showed video of Markwayne Mullin's news conference 20 minutes before your post.

Why is the DHS secretary taking the lead on this? Shouldn't it be Transportation?

I'm watching ADSBexchange too.

It's eerie seeing the total number of aircraft tracked decrease. I put on a filter for 1000' to 80000', to exclude aircraft on the ground, and the number was around 12K when I started watching. It's down to just over 9.4K now. Wild.

Edit: 22 minutes later and the count is down to 8.4K.

To be fair, above FL400 4̶0̶A̶G̶L̶ is relatively high for most airliners. Most are between FL300 and FL400.

I'm also near Detroit and am watching the trackers and I'm pretty sure I just saw N831AK take off from Troy Oakland in violation of the grounding order. I wonder how common that is.

Looks like some flights are taking off from JFK https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=4cc58a

Absolutely tons between 10K-20k, though.

    ATCSCC Advisory
    ATCSCC 111 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONAL GROUND STOP 

    EVENT TIME: 13/2053 - 14/0400
    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.

From Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/s/HUT3wjABQ6

https://i.postimg.cc/XqcsDQw9/image.png

https://nasstatus.faa.gov/map

Seems “not great” that the notice isn’t even showing…

It disappeared briefly, but is back now.

https://i.postimg.cc/bvzQNqc5/Screenshot-2026-11-13-at-21-37...

By chance were you flying an F-22 Raptor?

To err is human.

To really fuck up, you need a computer.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c6z9dwn12037t

> Transport Secretary Sean Duffy says the FAA "issued a nationwide ground stop for all US airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.

Same at SJC. The captain basically said, “IDK what to do, so I’m just going to read the bulletin Alaska sent out”

We were offered $1500 to get on a later flight and I’m so glad I didn’t get to the counter on time to take them up on it. Saw the news reports a half hour before landing.

Same here in PIT. Ubers are as much as my flight.

The flight crew on my LHR-SEA flight "still expects to land in the US." The lack of conviction in that expectation was audible. I don't get the impression that they're being told very much, but maybe that's literally a consequence of the "communication issues."

edit: we're on approach into Seattle, so apparently we were one of the happy cases of the "case-by-case basis."

Are you in the air now? Looks like it might be over but unclear really

Same here, LAX

get a hotel room before you can't

What is the cost of grounding all flights across the USA for one day?

It's because air traffic control systems in the US haven't been significantly upgraded in like a century. Keep kicking the can it will get more and more expensive

Never let a crisis goto waste. Someone screws up and the first reaction is to say “we need more money”

Hold on, let me fire up Claude…

Yes

Yep those are the last two. In 2023 it was because of a contractor deleted some file and caused NOTAM to go down, and 2001… well we all know what happened

https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/advADB

edit: #121 does load eventually:

https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis?adv_date=11132026&a...

  The Most Recent ATCSCC Advisory
  ATCSCC ADVZY 121 DCC 11/13/2026 REROUTE CANCELLATION
  MESSAGE: FC  A001:STARSHIP_WEST HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
  
  REMARKS: CANCELS ADVZY 036.
  ASSOCIATED RESTRICTIONS: 
  
  EFFECTIVE TIME: 132305-140040
  SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 23:05

Countdown continues: T-20m, according to the official SpaceX livestream at https://studio.x.com/embed/broadcast/2brajgZlOKRMka

Maybe not the launch but I wonder about the booster catch. Planes probably know to stay out of the area already.

I mean they should already be in a situation where no planes are scheduled to fly there, and now there will be even less planes. So seems like an ok situation for them.

I guess if some plane needs to do an emergency detour threw threw that space, but that seems unlikely.

otoh, the reason they normally need to communicate with atc is that there normally are planes

Gotta say man, I don't think that's gonna be a top priority for most people

It seems the ATC radio system went down across the country

This message was pulled from a ATC communications system ordering the stop. These are terse direct communications for professionals who don't need or have time to read the story of what's going on. The news, not having any initial sources besides this is just reporting it, at the time they had no more information.

Like if you're ordering a pizza they don't need the story of your day, why you chose pepperoni, or what movie you plan to watch. Somebody else might be interested, but not the pizza guy.

Perhaps https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

> A spokeswoman for the National Weather Service said a screenshot circulating online that claimed its weather radar was down was “outdated.”

> The Weather Service “has not experienced a disruption to its radar systems today,” said Kim Doster, the spokeswoman.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...

I suspect they mean that inbound flights from international airports may still take off (probably in part because the FAA can't _really_ stop them, in part because the volumes are much lower and thus more manageable, and in part because one might hope that by the time it takes to get to the US from many international destination, the incident will be resolved).

An Eithad flight took off from KBOS after the ground stop

Flight EY8 from Boston to Abu Dhabi https://fr24.com/ETD6PX/429055e2

It likely means any inbound international flights can be told to turn around and/or land outside of the U.S. instead.

The intent around the ground stop is to reduce in-air U.S. traffic.

Maybe they mean inbound international flights may be allowed to take off from their origin, on a case by case basis. Usually a clearance is required to take off from both the origin and destination.

friend is flying from London to NYC and they were told they might need to land in Toronto.

So my guess this is what it means "case by case". Some which are close to destination would be manually routed, others will land in different places.

Presumably it means they may allow some international flights to the US to depart if they expect the issue to be resolved by the time they are in US airspace.

Some might be turned back, depending on how far they are in the journey, fuel, etc:

like you don't have enough fuel to fly back across the ocean they'll accommodate you I assume?

I think it's more mundane than that, I assume they mean that certain international flights will be turned around or redirected while others will complete their route. Say a flight just an hour underway London to New York might be turned around while one nearly at its destination may be allowed to land.

Depending on the nature of the disruption it may be they simply have drastically reduced capacity to handle traffic so landings may be much slower and they'll manage the traffic based on various priorities.

Probably just means that if you're less than halfway across the Atlantic, you can turn around and go back to Europe. I really wouldn't suggest reading too much into the phrasing.

> The FAA has reassured the public and airlines that SMART only suggests routes and doesn't affect air safety.

> [The] FAA also says a D.C.-based team of experts validates findings before they’re ever passed on to air traffic control, and the controllers retain the final decision on whether to accept SMART’s suggestions.

Seems unlikely.

Doubtful. That tool likely suggests "improved" clearances, which a controller can use at their discretion. It likely does not control clearances directly.

And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.

Awkward timing, to say the least.

Their gate might be occupied by a flight that can't leave.

We are 6th in line waiting for a gate while they tow grounded planes off of the gates. Normally those flights would have departed and we would get a gate fairly quickly, but if no one is taking off, then they need to move them, and potentially deplane the (angry) departing passengers.

The only time I've spent long stretches on a grounded plane have been at ORD. It's such a busy airport than any disruption to the schedule just causes all sorts of chaos.

waiting on the stairs since all the gates are full

not enough gates

Standard protocol. Doesn’t matter what the issue is, you follow it

It's from 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20201017144706/https://www.weath...

> In a notice posted on its website, the agency said technicians are working to resolve the disruption as quickly as possible.

This article is very likely misreporting the US National Weather Service radar outage page you can find people reposting elsewhere in this comment section. The NWS page has been updated to say it does not reflect a current issue. Anecdotally, my local NWS weather radar is working fine. Also, weather doppler radar and ATC "radar" are very, very different technologies.

“National Weather Service reports nationwide radar website outage amid FAA ground stop.”

Given that the FAA issue also apparently relates to communications, it does seem like it might be related.

All I see here is "This page is no longer maintained or updated". Did they update it or sthg?

I really really doubt that's related. Seems like the website just broke.

Are the radars utilizing a shared asset with the radio systems?

They say "national outage," but if I go to the site for my area, my local weather radar seems to be working.

So strange

My wife's plane was about to take off (moving) but then stopped. I just messaged her to check once I saw the news. Sounds like the people onboard weren't given any info as to why. They're still on the runway waiting.

Hello from the ground

Physics says all planes land. I guess eventfully would be diversion (maybe to Canada lol) or Mayday Fuel (but you probably won't know it happened anyway - it just means some reserve fuel will be used).

Update:

    ATCSCC ADVZY 120 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONWIDE GROUND STOP

    MESSAGE: 
 

    EVENT TIME: 13/2245 - 14/0400
    DESTINATION AIRPORT:ALL
    FACILITIES INCLUDED: ALL
    EXPECT UPDATE:0400Z
    REASON: COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE           
    REMARKS: THE FAA COMMAND CENTER GROUND STOP REMAINS IN EFFECT. AS
    ENROUTE FACILITIES RECOVER, FLIGHTS WILL BE ALLOWED TO DEPART
    THROUGH COORDINATION WITH THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM COMMAND
    CENTER. 

    EFFECTIVE TIME: 132246-140430

    SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 22:46

As of 1345, "No ADVISORY Available for today."

There's a query form for looking up old advisories, and it's not returning anything for the last 15 days.

What does this mean? "DCC HAS IMPLEMENTED EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES TO 240 MINUTES FOR ALL ENROUTE CENTERS DUE TO NATIONWIDE COMMS FAILURE."

Why do all avionic systems communicate in caps?

likely just a self-inflicted DDOS as the entire world starts accessing various FAA websites to try to figure out wtf is going on

hugged to death

I can't find anything on this other than some outages earlier in the day. Any sources for this?

How can you tell AT&T is experiencing a massive outage?

Put the floppy disk back in!

Very, very much yes. Most busy airports will start having problems with gate capacity due to just normal delays. We definitely don't have the capacity to have every active flight in the country parked at a gate.

Based on my current experience on the ground at AUS, yes.

Gates were quickly full, ground ops to pull empty planes off gates takes quite a while, and about 90 mins later, we are pulling into our scheduled gate.

Not an expert but my guess:

They don't spend a dollar more than they need to so extra gates for this would be quite the luxury. I guess what they need though is apron space or hangar space for the extra planes and the number of gates won't matter so much.

lol

I don’t think you’re paranoid to recognize that something desperately in need of funding is suffering the consequences of a lack of funding.

This is (fortunately) from 2020, not current. I'm not sure why this is spreading like wildfire right now, but: https://radar3pub.ncep.noaa.gov/

Yes, park somewhere - and wait a long time for their turn getting a ladder, because the numbers are nowhere near satisfying such peak demand.

Flight Simulator as well.

Apparently a few internationally bound flights are being allowed to depart per NYT.

ATCSCC ADVZY 116 ALL/DCC 11/13/2026 NATION WIDE AIRBORNE HOLDING MESSAGE:

EVENT TIME: 13/2100 - 14/0300 USERS CAN EXPECT AIRBORNE HOLDING TO ANY AND ALL AIRPORTS WITHIN THE NAS DUE EQUIPTMENT OUTAGES. UPDATES WILL BE ISSUED AS ADITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. EFFECTIVE TIME:

132120-140330 SIGNATURE:

26/11/13 21:20

Edit: end date of tomorrow??? Is that just temporary?

I think you're wrong:

https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...

Listening to ATC; likely end time 10pm central. See also https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/faa-reportedly-issu...

It seems that the adv/ pages are not loading any advisories, though I am just guessing and have no idea how this is meant to work. The fact that the search page has a date input would seem to imply historical advisories should be shown. If you go to https://nasstatus.faa.gov/ and click the Advisory links for any of the active events that have one, they all show as blank too. Could be totally wrong though.

This happened to me a few minutes ago. I clicked that link, it said "no advisory", I was making the same comment you made, then tried refreshing and the advisory came back.

Insane. It looks like they are showing no advisory on first page view, then advisory? Can others confirm?

That’s crazy

I saw that international departures are resuming

I've read scattered reports of other flights also taking off from the east coast.

If the communications issue is between US ATC regions, this makes sense. The planes are being handed off to other non-US ATCs where there is no communications issue.

happened before

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...

That tool was first unveiled for the Washington, D.C., area airports two months ago, on a day when problems with air traffic communications failures also grounded hundreds of flights, after a circuit failed and it was discovered that contractors had accidentally ripped through a fiber line that was supposed to serve as its backup.

I was actually expecting it to be from the Microsoft 365 outage. Non technical people have a bad habit of inserting email as a critical step in a process.

It's actually quite impressive, you have to really try to be so bad at your job of building redundant systems that some failure mode implausibly affects everything nation wide, yet allows Canadian domestic flights to proceed fine.

If we are all spit-balling, I would imagine it has to do with DOGE and Project 2025.

Weird things happen when you destroy the federal infra, aka the USA.

Am I being hyperbolic? Well, this was the first national ground stop since 9/11... and for what?

AI models are trained on data, that I’m sure talks a lot about Friday the 13th…

On an inbound international flight and the pilot made a PA announcement a few minutes ago to this effect.

How did you find this link?

I guess they don't have many outages, otherwise they'd probably know how to spell the word by now...

Hm, only international ones though, and only at coastal airports. I guess oceanic airspace is less affected by whatever this is?

extraordinarily unlikely

@dang also plz plug the “FAA ATC” cable back in; it was needed.

I’ve heard multiple planes overhead in the last 5 min in Ft. Lauderdale. Maybe they’re circling.

You can see it live, check the plane tracker at flightaware or adsb.lol

"The easiest person to fool is yourself." I think because we love patterns so much we see them everywhere they aren't.

Both feel like extraordinary disruptions that are indistinguishable from cyberattacks from the user perspective.

Do you believe in apophenia?

It's standing right in front of our faces but we're making an effort not to see it. For to notice it is to give it the recognition that it seeks.

The world is complex and mostly duck taped together so I wouldn't get too concerned just yet.

Hanlon's razor

> "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action." -Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

You need to wait for the third shoe to drop.

Doubtful. That tool likely suggests "improved" clearances, which a controller can use at their discretion. It likely does not control clearances directly.

And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.

That is an extremely bad idea.

This actually makes sense. I can't believe people actually think outlook being down would take down all departures across the US

holy fuck that website is shit

lfmao, really bad timing but I really doubt something announced yesterday went into effect today, it's probably going to be rolled out in the future.

If true and this ends up lasting an hour or more, that's going to be undeniably, objectively hilarious. At least they used to keep the planes running on time!

--- EDIT:

This could just be the first issue that's arisen -- the FAA announced it "is expanding across the nation" on Tuesday. Which could really mean anything.

FAA Announcement: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements

The Ars Technica article behind the Gizmodo one sadly doesn't have more info, either.

It'd be kind of absurd if a read-only integration took down nationwide infrastructure, but A) we've all been there... and B) the gizmodo article does mention they're also trying to phase out floppy disks for some jobs still, which tells me their CI/CD and rollback hygiene might not be top-notch. Hopefully the Real World contestant in charge of our transportation network is on site with a ClaudeCode terminal as we speak!

It does sound pretty deeply integrated, I will say:

  SMART is a cloud-based system that centralizes 200 data streams – including weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow, and controller staffing metrics – into one platform.

  Creates **a single shared real-time picture** of schedules, weather, airport capacity, and airspace conditions.
  ...
  Enhances the effectiveness of **existing** FAA air traffic management systems.

You are right, it isn't. Good for you.

why are the flight paths in the shape of a pelican riding a bicycle?

If true they would raise another 100B

Fingers crossed it’s Aliens!

Opening scene of Terminator 2. Or another AI escaped and decided to hack into flight control.

> if this was a prelude to war ?

The US is already at war with Iran. France blamed Iran for the fridge hacks too

Everybody knows attacks are coming from Iran and Russia regularly, it's not a conspiracy theory

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the amount of pressure that AI slop is being launched into every system in the world.

Verizon Wireless is out here as well ("SOS"—thankfully my UA flight has Starlink).

Last time this happened in July it was due to some network handoff issue so maybe there is some fiber cut somewhere? (My friend said last time it was NE corridor Verizon fiber cut.)

Yeah, especially when it's obviously from the long term effects of 5G

Any three of those pessimistic scenarios seem plausible though. Frightening. Intentional hack/exploit of air traffic control systems is the first thing that came to my mind when I first saw the news.

This worries me. Do airports have enough parking spots if all planes were to be grounded at the same time?

And conveniently side-steps the issue when someone asks if it is related to an AI rollout.

From what I’m hearing, some international flights are being allowed to depart, they can be transferred to international ATC once in the air.

There’s still lower ground telecoms for take off.

Also astrologists.

Surely high speed trains suffer from network wide monitoring outages too? I would imagine they're susceptable to similar issues.

Update from our pilot: some flights do take off from Canada so not quite clear yet.

Also he says he saw a plane taking off LAX so fingers crossed. Still no news though

Update from our pilot: west coast flights can fly east, east coast can fly west. Basically NOT over continental US

One thing to add is that this is bipartisan: both parties have failed to adequately fund ATC updates, and it sometimes feels like there's more interest in vanity projects than fundamental infrastructure funding and solving personnel shortages (ATC is a very difficult career, and the pay, benefits and prestige are not incredible. Fewer and fewer people are choosing to go into this very critical line of work).

who said they don't, and those didn't work or don't apply in this situation?

No, please stop engaging in baseless and pointless speculation. If the US wants to bomb Iran it doesn’t need more reasoning than it has already used to already do what it has done.

The fact that you can ask "which one?" tells you something about where we as a nation were at in 2024.

He also corrected a reporter who asked about AI, saying "we call it SI now". So there's that.

Doubtful. That tool likely suggests "improved" clearances, which a controller can use at their discretion. It likely does not control clearances directly.

And the early reports describe the issue as related to ATC communication infrastructure.

No. A route planning tool, AI or not, couldn't possibly cause this.

Oh man. It would be such a perfect encapsulation of these times. If not related, then truly cursed launch/PR timing.

It looks like the FAA started testing it in DC in September and annouced a nationwide rollout three days ago (https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements). This makes it seem more unlikely to be the cause, though:

  A team of FAA specialists in the SMART center in Washington, D.C., analyzes and validates the SMART data and provides scheduling recommendations to the agency’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, VA. The Command Center then routes these recommendations to air traffic control facilities for local leadership to consider.

No, and when Netflix goes down it's not a false flag due to their fear of people running their own Plex servers. Perhaps you just have anxiety about losing something you depend on, so you're projecting.

its front page news everywhere right now. something definitely happened

I've worked in IT long enough to know it is 99/100 times an internal glitch or misconfiguration, not hackers, that brings a system down.