On August 18, 2026, flights arriving and departing Minnesota along with nine other states in the Midwest were grounded or diverted due to a temporary outage at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Minneapolis air traffic control facility.
The affected states include Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. The outage stemmed from failures in radar and air traffic control systems handled by the Minneapolis facility, which manages air traffic across a 330,000-square-mile region. Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport was not the origin of the disruption but experienced significant operational impacts.
Delays at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport and Regional Impact
Delays at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) averaged
90 minutes on Thursday evening. Despite restoration of radar and control systems, disruptions remained at several airports within the affected region throughout the evening.
Flights scheduled to pass over or land in Minnesota and neighboring states were either held on the ground or diverted. This widespread disruption interrupted passenger flight operations and caused holding patterns in the airspace managed by the Minneapolis air traffic control center.
FAA Confirmation and Scope of Outage
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the system outage at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility on August 18, 2026. The temporary failure affected radar and air traffic control capabilities over a 330,000-square-mile section of
the Midwest airspace, leading to flight groundings and operational delays.
