Kansas City Chiefs players and coaches are due in Atlanta for Sunday’s game, but on Friday a nationwide FAA ground stop halted every U.S. flight departure.
With the agency offering no timetable for lifting the order, the Chiefs’ travel plans and those of every other NFL team playing on the road this week could be thrown into turmoil.
The Federal Aviation Administration stopped every outbound flight in the country Friday afternoon “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” an advisory stated, according to CNN. The order covers departures only. Aircraft already aloft can still touch down, and flights from overseas bound for U.S. airports are being evaluated individually.
Kansas City Chiefs Travel Plans for Atlanta
The Chiefs have not publicly said when their charter leaves for Atlanta, where the 6-2 Chiefs meet the 3-6 Falcons at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. NFL clubs typically fly out Friday or Saturday, which puts Friday’s ground stop squarely in the window for any team that planned an evening departure.
Kansas City was still home Friday. The Chiefs held their final practice of the week there, and running back Kenneth Walker III sat out with groin tightness. He is listed as questionable for Sunday, and the team plans to reassess him in rehab Friday afternoon and again Saturday.
“If he can go, he can go. If he can’t, he can’t,” coach Andy Reid said, according to ESPN.
Because the stop applies only to departures, it affects the Chiefs only if it’s still in place when their flight is ready to leave Kansas City. Atlanta, as the home team, has no flight to make. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport confirmed that arrivals can still land, but outbound flights stay held, according to WSB-TV.
Nothing from the league or the FAA yet points to a change for the Chiefs’ noon CST kickoff Sunday (1 p.m. EST in Atlanta), more than 44 hours away. As of 4:30 p.m. EST Friday, no NFL team had reported a flight disrupted by the stop.
FAA Ground Stop Cause and Timeline
The FAA has not named a root cause.
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote in a statement, as quoted by The Hill. The statement attributed the stop to a communication problem at all of the country’s Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the facilities that direct aircraft flying between cities.
The halt followed a “rolling frequency outage” at the control sites that track aircraft aloft, according to the Washington Examiner, which said two agency staffers tipped it off and documents confirmed the order.
Chicago went first. The FAA stopped traffic there, according to Reuters, over trouble with controller communications ahead of the national order.
How long the stoppage lasts is unknown as of Friday afternoon. The FAA’s posted event window runs through 11 p.m. EST, though it can change, according to CBS12, and the order itself has no firm end. A Saturday charter would leave after that listed window closes.
Some accounts claimed the stop had ended. Those claims remain unconfirmed. An unnamed FAA source called the situation “absolutely unheard of.”
Friday’s order is the first of its kind since January 2023, when a computer failure grounded departures, according to the Associated Press. Before that, the only comparable order followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when the FAA cleared the skies, according to NBC News. The 2023 stop, caused by a failure of the pilot-alert system, lasted about 90 minutes, according to News On 6.
Even after it lifted, the disruption kept growing.
Neither the FAA nor Duffy has said when departures will resume, and the Chiefs have not said when they plan to leave.
Will Chiefs-Falcons Game Be Delayed Sunday? What to Know About FAA Ground Stop