Ground Stop Ordered at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport [UPDATED]

See below for updates. 

A ground stop has been ordered at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston as a result of an undisclosed security incident. 

NOW: Ground stop currently underway at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) due to unspecified security threat. pic.twitter.com/wgbOm5SwCh

— Noteworthy News (@newsnoteworthy) June 13, 2025

Emergency response teams are on the scene: 

A ground stop has been issued at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport due to reports of an unspecified security threat. Consequently, all inbound and outbound flights have been ordered to halt, and emergency response teams are currently on the scene. However, the exact…

— Mike Talks Politics 🇺🇸 (@miketalks47) June 13, 2025

According to the FAA: 

Ground stop(s) (GS) override all other traffic management initiatives. Aircraft must not be released from a GS without the approval of the originator of the GS.

The GS is a process that requires aircraft that meet a specific criteria to remain on the ground. The criteria may be airport specific, airspace specific, or equipment specific; for example, all departures to San Francisco, or all departures entering Yorktown sector, or all Category I and II aircraft going to Charlotte. GSs normally occur with little or no warning. Since GSs are one of the most restrictive methods of traffic management, alternative initiatives must be explored and implemented if appropriate. GSs should be used:

In severely reduced capacity situations (below most user arrival minimums, airport/runway closed for snow removal, or aircraft accidents/incidents);

To preclude extended periods of airborne holding;

To preclude sector/center reaching near saturation levels or airport grid lock;

In the event a facility is unable or partially unable to perform ATC services due to unforeseen circumstances;

When routings are unavailable due to severe weather; and

When routings are unavailable due to catastrophic events.

For local ground stops: “A facility may initiate a local GS when the facilities impacted are wholly contained within the facility’s area of responsibility and conditions are not expected to last more than 30 minutes. Local GSs must not be extended without prior approval of the ATCSCC.”

This incident, whatever it is, comes on the heels of a devastating Air India plane crash early Thursday that killed nearly 300 people. 

It also comes amid massive problems with Cloudflare, which protects websites against cyberattacks. My colleague Charlie Martin wrote earlier: 

The problem this time appears to have been centered around Cloudflare’s Zero Trust WARP connectivity manager and Access identity-based authentication products, all part of the overall Zero Trust platform.

This immediately raises the question of how a failure in one company can hit so many websites. To understand this, you need to understand what Cloudflare does.

One of the major issues on the internet just a few years ago was distributed denial of service. Basically, any web server has limited resources it can apply to serving a website’s request — things like the number of concurrent connections, the amount of compute power it can provide, and the number of server processes it can manage. A really primitive way of attacking a website was to just write a program that kept making requests of the site you wanted to attack. The technical term for this is “banging the hell out of it.”

Update 10:50 p.m.: We have this unconfirmed report from Times Now News: 

As per initial reports from the local media, a black SUV crashed through a gate at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and entered the secured cargo area, prompting a major security response.

Police are investigating the breach, and it’s not yet confirmed if this is connected to the FAA-issued ground stop.

According to Click 2 Houston: 

Police say a black SUV hit a gate at Bush Intercontinental Airport and drove into the Air Operations Area Thursday evening.

HPD confirmed the incident and said the vehicle drove into the cargo area, but did not have any other details at the time of this writing.

It is unclear if anyone was arrested or what happened afterwards.

Update 10:58 p.m. ET: The ground stop has now been lifted. 

Update 11:20 p.m. ET: Here’s audio of the incident from air traffic controllers: 

BREAKING: A “rogue vehicle” broke into George Bush Intercontinental Airport earlier tonight in Houston Texas

KPRC2 pulled ATC audio.
Shoutout to @GageGoulding

According to Gage’s reporting “An SUV rammed a gate at 8:30 pm & drove into a cargo area.”
pic.twitter.com/xAm8eqJib6

— Joseph Trimmer (@JosephTrimmer_) June 13, 2025

This is a developing story. PJ Media will bring you more information as it becomes available.