FAA grounds all US flights as Trump admin's AI air traffic system SMART goes live

The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop at all US airports on Friday afternoon, halting departing flights until 11 p.m. EST while inbound international flights are handled case-by-case. The halt came as the agency's cloud-based, AI-supported air traffic platform SMART was scheduled to go live that day, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed it to a communication issue affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.