A temporary outage at the Minneapolis air traffic control facility on August 20, 2026, disrupted flight operations over 330,000 square miles of the Midwest, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Flights Diverted and Grounded Across Ten Midwest States
Flights arriving into and departing from Minnesota and nine neighboring states—including Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin—were either held on the ground or diverted during the outage. The FAA confirmed that the widespread impact spanned the entire region under the Minneapolis facility’s jurisdiction.
Delays at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport and Beyond
Delays at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) averaged 90 minutes on the evening of August 20, 2026. Additional delays were anticipated at airports
across the affected states throughout the evening hours, extending the disruption well beyond Minnesota.
The FAA identified failures in radar and air traffic control systems at the Minneapolis regional control center as the cause of the outage. While these systems were restored later on the same day, operational disruptions persisted at multiple airports even after the systems resumed function.
The FAA emphasized that the outage affected the Minneapolis air traffic control facility, which manages air traffic over a large swath of the Midwest, rather than directly impacting the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport itself.
