The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration imposed a nationwide ground stop for approximately five hours on November 13, 2026, grounding all flights departing from the United States. Calgary International Airport held U.S.-bound flights for several hours before the FAA lifted the restriction shortly after 7 p.m. MST, causing widespread cancellations and delays affecting hundreds of flights from Calgary.
Flight cancellations extend across Canada including Calgary
Air Canada cancelled nearly 250 flights on November 13, impacting around 27,000 passengers, according to spokesperson Yasmine Mehdi. Toronto Pearson International Airport alone cancelled 143 U.S.-bound flights on Friday and 63 more on Saturday. Additional cancellations occurred in Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Calgary.
Along with Air Canada, WestJet and Porter Airlines waived change fees and added extra flights to assist affected travellers.
Passenger experiences at Calgary International Airport
At Calgary International Airport, passengers to U.S. destinations faced extended delays and cancellations. Some boarded flights that were later cancelled and were left waiting in terminals or on hold with airlines. Lloydminster resident Naji Zuain was on a delayed flight to Denver that eventually disembarked and was rebooked for a 9 a.m. departure the following day. Zuain commented, “It’s kind of unfair for them to have to cover each and every passengers’ expenses due to something that was no fault of
their own.”
Technical cause of the disruption
The FAA attributed the ground stop to a telecommunications fault caused by contractor L3Harris during installation of a new router at a remote facility. This new router flooded other routers in the U.S. air traffic control system, disrupting communications and scrambling radar feeds. The incident led to the longest nationwide flight shutdown in the U.S. since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Official responses and recovery timeline
Yasmine Mehdi of Air Canada stated, “This was a significant disruption, and its effects have carried over into today, with additional cancellations as aircraft and crews are out of position across our network.” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford
said that the U.S. air travel schedule was expected to normalize by the end of Sunday, November 15, 2026. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the outage to the router installation by FAA contractor L3Harris, which caused cascading communication failures.
Scale and historical context of disruption
The FAA ground stop grounded all U.S. departures and caused cascading delays and cancellations in Canada and globally, including at Calgary International Airport and other major Canadian hubs. This event represents the longest nationwide shutdown of flights in the U.S. since the events of September 11, 2001, severely disrupting North American air travel networks.
