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All US flights were ordered not to take off Friday afternoon as the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a “national ground stop.”

“Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” said an alert from the FAA, “by order of the Federal Aviation Administration all airports are ground stopped. All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the ground stop was due to "a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”

A major outage appeared to be affecting the FAA’s air traffic control system, The New York Times reported.

“FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” Duffy said. “We will provide immediate updates as we have them."

The FAA issued an unprecedented nationwide ground stop order and closed the nation’s airspace after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

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