Haiti flights frozen by US ground stop: Miami departures held

Haiti travel runs through the United States — and on Friday, the United States stopped flying. The FAA's nationwide ground stop has held every departing flight at every US airport since 3:54 PM Eastern. Because nearly all commercial flights between the US and Haiti leave from American airports — above all Miami and Fort Lauderdale — flights to Haiti are frozen tonight.

By 7:00 PM Eastern, FlightAware counted more than 3,500 US flights cancelled and more than 10,200 delayed. The stop reaches across the Atlantic: Eurocontrol has suspended US-bound departures from Europe at the FAA's request, through midnight Eastern.

Planes already in the air are continuing to their destinations, and inbound international flights are being handled case by case. A flight that left Port-au-Prince can land in Miami. No plane is leaving Miami to go back.

If you are traveling tonight: check your flight with your airline before you go anywhere, and do not go to the airport for a US departure. The FAA plans to release flights in stages, facility by facility, and its next update is expected at 11:00 PM Eastern.

The Microsoft outage reached Haiti quietly. Businesses, NGOs and aid organizations in Haiti that coordinate on Microsoft 365 lost email and messaging in the same worldwide blackout that hit 74 countries. No Haitian government agency has reported an institutional outage.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the FAA failure and the Microsoft outage are separate issues, and there is no indication of an attack. Flights inside the Caribbean that never touch US airspace continue to operate normally.

This is a developing story. The HVE News Desk is following the FAA's 11:00 PM Eastern update and will revise this report as departures resume.