Costa Rica grounds flights after electrical failure knocks out radar at SJO

An electrical failure in the radar systems at Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO) knocked out surveillance Wednesday morning, prompting Costa Rica to suspend all arrivals and departures nationwide; at least 44 flights at SJO were affected before airspace was later reopened.

Discovered 2025-09-24T07:41:20.701905-07:00 | 2025-09-24T07:41:20.701905-07:00

Briefing

What Hype is tracking

Nationwide operational halt: an electrical failure at Juan Santamaría (SJO) suspended all arrivals and departures Wednesday; at least 44 flights at SJO were affected.
Signals infrastructure vulnerability: a radar/electrical fault knocked out ATC surveillance — similar radar outages have previously grounded flights, including a roughly 20‑minute outage at NATS’ Swanwick ATC centre (https://hype.aero/?story=406b433f-6e30-4097-9be1-7d88c05f3ecd) and a tower evacuation that halted operations at Reagan National (https://hype.aero/?story=77f166f3-cd26-4c53-9df5-df6e6e2bda9).
Network risk for carriers: technology and ATC failures have forced airline-wide groundings and FAA ground stops in recent months, producing large backlogs and operational disruption (https://hype.aero/?story=41056992-6ace-430b-9b76-ca15e782f8da; https://hype.aero/?story=a65be9eb-b2be-4070-84c0-69db06af81b7).

Reported By

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