On August 18, 2026, a temporary system outage involving radar and air traffic control systems at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility caused flights to be grounded across a 330,000 square mile area in the Midwest.
The affected airspace and flights included those inbound to and outbound from Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. The Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport experienced average delays of 90 minutes on the evening of August 18 but was not the site of the outage itself.
Flights across the ten affected states were held on the ground, diverted, or delayed. Although
the air traffic control systems were restored on August 18, 2026, flight disruptions continued throughout the evening at several airports in the region.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that the outage at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility caused the widespread flight groundings and delays that affected air travel across the Midwest, highlighting the facility’s central role in managing traffic over a vast 330,000 square mile airspace.
