A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) equipment outage at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility on August 7, 2026, caused widespread flight disruptions across eight Midwestern states. Airports including Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) and Omaha’s Eppley Airfield reported delays, ground stops, and diversions as the outage affected monitoring of flights over a 330,000 square mile region.
Midwest Flights Grounded or Delayed Due to Control Center Outage
The FAA outage impacted radar and air traffic control systems at the Minneapolis regional control center, not the MSP airport tower itself. The failure resulted in flights arriving and departing Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin being delayed,
held on the ground, or diverted. Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport confirmed a ground stop issued in response to the outage.
Timeline and System Restoration
The ground stop at MSP was imposed around 2 p.m. local time. By 4:15 p.m., some airline operations began to resume at MSP and other affected airports. FAA officials reported their systems were back online but warned that delays could continue for several more hours. As of the latest update, the FAA has not identified a cause for the outage.
The outage caused numerous delays at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, where arrivals and departures experienced hold patterns and cancellations. Airport
officials advised passengers to contact their airlines before traveling to the airport due to ongoing flight impacts.
The Metropolitan Airports Commission noted, “Expect some flight impacts to resume through evening as airlines recover.” FAA spokespeople confirmed the outage concerns were limited to the regional control center managing Midwestern airspace, which covers more than 330,000 square miles, and not local tower services at MSP.
