On August 18, a system outage at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility caused flights throughout the Midwest to be grounded, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed. The disruption affected radar and air traffic control systems managed by the facility on that day.
Covering an airspace of approximately 330,000 square miles, the affected ATC facility manages traffic over Minnesota and nine additional Midwest states. Flights heading to or departing from this region, including Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, experienced operational disruptions.
Due to the outage, many flights were either diverted or held on the ground
across the region. Although the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport was not the site of the outage, it recorded average delays of 90 minutes on the evening of August 18. Grounding and delays extended to multiple other airports within the affected states.
System functions were restored later on August 18; however, several airports in Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin continued to face delays throughout the evening, as traffic recovery remained gradual.
