Minneapolis-St. Paul Operations Resume After ATC Outage Grounds Flights Across The Midwest

Aircraft across nine states lost contact with U.S. air traffic control on Thursday after the Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) suffered an equipment failure that grounded operations regionwide. The outage left the facility unable to control flights—described as “ATC Zero”—at about 2:00 PM local time. Radar and radio capabilities returned after roughly two hours, but the disruption triggered ground stops and extensive delays throughout a 330,000-square-mile area spanning Minnesota and parts of the Midwest. Cascading delays averaged 90 to 205 minutes into Thursday evening. Minneapolis Saint Paul International (MSP) saw 87 departure delays, and the FAA said services were fully restored while it investigates the cause.