A ground stop is an air traffic control procedure that requires all aircraft that fit certain criteria to remain on the ground. This could be airport specific or perhaps equipment or airspace specific, depending on the exact event that caused the ground stop to occur. Downstream effects can occur from the hazard, causes flights to be delayed or canceled and flight crew being unable to reach the location of their next scheduled aircraft.

Description

A ground stop is an air traffic control measure that slows or halts the flow of aircraft that meet certain criteria, requiring all aircraft of a certain criteria to remain on the ground. Often, the criteria is aircraft inbound to a given airport, where a ground stop is the halting of departing aircraft destined for one particular airport or for a specific geographic area. The criteria could be airport specific or perhaps equipment or airspace specific, depending on the exact event that caused the ground stop to occur. A ground stop does not affect flights en route.

Use

For example, if a ground stop is called for Newark Liberty International Airport, aircraft departing for Newark from other airports will not be given departure clearance until such time that the ground stop in Newark is lifted. This allows, in this example, for Newark to deal with the task at hand preparing for arriving aircraft once the ground stop is lifted. Ground stops may occur during an operational event (e.g., a computer outage), a thunderstorm or other weather concerns (e.g., due to the danger of wind shear or hail), or another hazard. As a possible downstream effect, flights that have not departed their airport of origin could be delayed or cancelled by the carrier. As well as this, pilots and flight crew may be held up by a ground stop, unable to get to the next aircraft that they are supposed to staff on time. Because of this, further flights may be delayed or even canceled with the flight crew that was supposed to staff them stuck or otherwise delayed by a ground stop.

Notable examples