A communications problem affecting every Air Route Traffic Control Center prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a nationwide ground stop on November 13. The action came days after the agency expanded an AI air traffic control tool nationwide, though any role for that newly deployed system remained uncertain.
Beginning that afternoon, the highly unusual halt covering all US flights was described as the first full ground stop since January 2023. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explained that it was “following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” adding that “FAA technicians are investigating the issue.”
The timing raised questions about the Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories system, or SMART. During a television appearance, Homeland Security administrator Markwayne Mullin was asked whether the two events might be connected and confirmed that officials were examining that possibility. Referring to SMART, Mullin said, “We’re looking at that,” followed by: “We’re working with our counterparts throughout all agencies.”
The government contractor that developed SMART, Air Space Intelligence, promptly rejected any link. In a statement, the company wrote: “The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.” That denial is distinct from Mullin’s confirmation that an investigation was underway. Reporting available so far does not show that SMART was responsible for the communications problem.
Before this week’s substantial national expansion, SMART had been operating in Washington, DC. The FAA statement issued November 10 says its purpose is to help controllers “reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public.” The government’s cost for the system was just shy of $1 billion.
In Futurism’s assessment, a nationwide grounding so soon after the rollout will likely subject the deployment to renewed scrutiny. Its reporting also identifies a wider safety risk: an AI model that hallucinates and supplies incorrect advice to a controller could cause disastrous consequences when tens of thousands of people may be flying over the US at any given moment. This describes a hypothetical danger; it does not establish that a model supplied such advice in this incident.
Futurism further frames the episode in terms of public trust. The outlet interprets the midterm elections earlier this month as evidence that Americans rejected AI wholesale, especially data centers. It contends that suggestions linking an AI-powered air traffic control system to a widespread grounding would hinder efforts by the tech industry and the Trump administration to win back public trust. These are the outlet’s political judgments and possible implications, rather than conclusions about what caused the outage.
In a separate denial, Microsoft said the ground stop was not connected to its own problems that day, when products including Outlook and Teams experienced widespread outages. “We have no indication that the FAA’s nationwide ground stop is related to any Microsoft services,” the company said. The cause of the communications failure affecting the control centers is still unresolved. A technology rollout’s timing, by itself, cannot establish what happened.
