The Federal Aviation Administration reported a temporary system outage at its Minneapolis air traffic control facility on August 20, 2026, grounding flights across the U.S. Midwest region. The outage affected air traffic management over a 330,000 square mile area.
Air traffic control and radar systems failed at the Minneapolis facility, disrupting flights inbound and outbound from Minnesota and nine additional states: Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. Flights across these states were either diverted or held on the ground during the outage.
Delays at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport averaged 90 minutes on the evening of August
20. Although radar and air traffic control systems were restored later in the evening, disruptions and delays continued at several airports within the affected states.
The outage occurred at a central Minneapolis air traffic control center that oversees flights across the expansive Midwest region, not at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport itself. This major control facility handles extensive airspace spanning 330,000 square miles, accounting for the widespread impact across multiple states.
