On August 20, 2026, a temporary system outage at a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control facility near Minneapolis disrupted flights across a 330,000 square mile area covering Minnesota and nine other Midwest states.
Flight operations at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport experienced average delays of 90 minutes Thursday evening. Delays were also reported at regional airports in Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, with disruptions expected to continue through the evening.
The outage affected radar and air traffic control systems at the Minneapolis facility that manages airspace across multiple states. Flights inbound to and outbound from
the region were diverted or held on the ground, although the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport itself did not experience the system failure directly.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the outage and stated that affected systems later came back online. Despite recovery of the air traffic control systems, operational disruptions persisted at several regional airports throughout the Midwest on August 20, according to the FAA.
