Mystery outage behind US airline JetBlue asking FAA to ground its flights

JetBlue took the unusual step of requesting a ground stop for all flights this morning, with the US airline resuming operations less than an hour later and blaming the stop on "a brief system outage."

The request was made to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and an Air Traffic Control System Command Center advisory was issued at 0530 UTC (signed at 0439). The ground stop was canceled in an advisory issued at 0610.

A ground stop is used to temporarily halt flights, usually due to weather or operational issues. Flights already underway are not affected, but new departures are not permitted. It is unusual for an airline to make the request, and it can be very expensive for the airline involved. Even though the ground stop in this instance was relatively short, JetBlue will have to deal with the logistical issues of aircraft missing departure and arrival slots and ...