About GroundStopNow
An independent tracker of FAA ground stops, ground delay programs and airport closures, built for the fifteen minutes when a traveler needs one clear answer.
What this site is
GroundStopNow reads the FAA's public National Airspace System status feed once a minute, normalises every airport event into a single schema, and publishes it as pages a passenger can read on a phone. It also keeps a permanent archive of events, because the FAA publishes current status only.
It is run as an independent publication. It is not a government service, not an airline, and not a flight tracking product. It does not show aircraft positions or gate-level flight status.
Data sources
- FAA NAS Status — current airport events, including ground stops, ground delay programs, closures and delay figures. Polled every 60 seconds.
- FAA airport status XML — a secondary feed used as a fallback if the JSON endpoint is unavailable.
- NOAA aviation weather (METAR) — wind, visibility and temperature for airport pages.
- OurAirports — public-domain airport reference data (names, codes, coordinates, type).
Method and limits
Status is written from the feed as provided. We do not edit FAA numbers, estimate missing values, or infer a cause that is not published. When a delay figure is absent, the page says so. When the feed is stale, the page says that too, with the age of the snapshot.
Event start and end times are the moments our collector first observed a change, so they can differ from FAA advisories by up to 60 seconds. Durations inherit that margin.
What we do not do
- We do not claim to be the FAA, and we do not use FAA marks or seals.
- We do not provide operational or safety-critical guidance.
- We do not guarantee compensation outcomes or sell a "guaranteed claim".
- We do not publish aircraft positions or personal flight data.
How the site is funded
The site is supported by advertising on selected pages and by a commercial API for teams that need machine-readable status. Advertising is suppressed during national ground stops so the status stays readable when it matters most.
Corrections
If a page shows a status that does not match the FAA advisory, email support@groundstopnow.com with the airport, the timestamp and a screenshot. Data corrections are treated as the highest priority.