Donald Trump has sparked chaos at JFK after flying into New York, shutting down swathes of airspace, stranding passengers and diverting flights across the country.

The President stepped off Air Force One at 2.08pm on Friday before boarding an Osprey to head to Garden City on Long Island for a speech, then on to his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey for the weekend.

Within half an hour the FAA had slapped a ground stop on every flight bound for JFK from the entire northeastern US and eastern Canada. 

The ground stop was officially put down to thunderstorms, but pilots were telling passengers something different.

One passenger flying from San Francisco to New York on American Airlines was diverted to Pittsburgh, hundreds of miles off course, and told the Daily Mail the crew gave a blunt explanation.

'It's not storms. The pilot told us it's Trump,' the passenger said.

'Flights diverted all over the country. I've ended up in Pittsburgh so he can play f***ing golf in Bedminster this weekend.' 

The FAA extended the ground stop at 4pm, pushing it back to 4.30pm and upgrading the chances of a further extension from 'low' to 'medium.'

A separate delay program adding an average of 62 minutes to every JFK-bound flight in the country is scheduled to run until 10.59pm. 

Even once the restrictions lift, the backlog will take hours to clear.

Diverted aircraft need refueling and slots to get airborne again, and crews who have been stuck on the tarmac for hours will start running into federal duty-time limits, forcing outright cancellations rather than delays.

By 4pm, flight tracking service FlightAware had logged 159 delayed arrivals at JFK, close to a quarter of every flight scheduled into the airport, with a further 81 departures held up.

Across the United States, 4,696 flights were delayed and 142 cancelled.

Airports across the US are frequently hurled into pandemonium when the President flies into town, the problem being exacerbated by heightened travel on Friday afternoon to one of the country's biggest air hubs. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.