Outage Causes Hundreds of Flight Cancellations in Dallas

Image: A plane taking off from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. (photo by Patrick Clarke)
Image: A plane taking off from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. (photo by Patrick Clarke)
Eraine Wessler
by Eraine Wessler
Last updated: 2:30 PM ET, Sat September 20, 2025

A telephone equipment outage on Friday caused more than half of the flights to be canceled or delayed at both Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the disruption was traced to a local telephone system outage on Friday afternoon. Passengers were stranded part of the day in planes and in the terminals.

More than 500 flights were delayed, and some incoming flights were diverted to other areas, including Oklahoma. Ground stops at the two Dallas airports were lifted Friday night at 7:30 p.m. (Love) and 9:30 p.m. (DFW), but repercussions continued. As of Saturday, intermittent outages were still being reported by the FAA, along with additional flight delays, but Love Field’s operations were back to normal.

“The FAA reported an issue involving the telecommunications provider for the air traffic control facility that oversees the airspace in the Dallas-Fort Worth area,” said American Airlines in a statement. “As a result, the FAA has severely limited flights into both DFW Airport and Dallas Love Field, which is affecting our operation.”

There have been multiple major delays this year at U.S. airports, resulting from everything from radar problems to air traffic control staffing shortages, as well as several incidents on the ground and in the air.

 

 

 


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