On August 20, 2026, a temporary system outage involving radar and air traffic control systems occurred at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Minneapolis air traffic control facility, which manages flights over 330,000 square miles of the U.S. Midwest.
This outage caused flights headed into and departing Minnesota and nine other Midwest states — Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin among them — to be diverted or held on the ground, affecting operations across multiple regional airports.
Delays continued throughout the evening, with Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) experiencing average flight delays of 90 minutes on August 20,
2026. Other airports in the affected states also faced ongoing delays despite the systems coming back online.
The outage did not occur at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport itself but at the FAA’s Minneapolis air traffic control facility responsible for managing air traffic over the large Midwest region.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the grounding and delays caused by the outage at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility that serves at least Minnesota and nine adjoining states.
