A system outage at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility on August 20, 2026, caused flights across Minnesota and nine other Midwest states to be grounded, held on the tarmac, or rerouted, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The outage disrupted essential air traffic control systems, including radar operations, impacting air travel throughout Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin in addition to Minnesota. The affected air traffic control center manages operations over 330,000 square miles of Midwest airspace.
Although the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport was not the site of the outage, flights at MSP faced an
average delay of 90 minutes Thursday evening. Other regional airports in the affected states also experienced significant delays expected to continue into the evening hours as the FAA worked to stabilize the situation.
The Minneapolis air traffic control facility is a major hub for Midwest aviation, overseeing a vast region. The outage’s ripple effect caused broad travel interruptions across multiple states, grounding flights and complicating airport operations on August 20, 2026.
