On November 13, 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights across the United States, halting approximately 11,000 scheduled departures and disrupting over 10,000 flights. The ground stop commenced at about 4 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) and was lifted at 8:15 p.m. ET, lasting more than four hours. About 1.5 million passengers were affected, with hundreds of flights being canceled or diverted.
Telecommunications Outage Shuts Down Air Route Traffic Control Centers
The FAA attributed the ground stop to a “temporary telecommunications outage” affecting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) that guide aircraft at high altitudes along their routes. The failure stemmed
from overloaded, aging telecommunications routers using legacy copper line equipment dating back to the 1980s. Newer equipment installed by the FAA did not fail during the incident. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explained, “We use 1980s little copper lines. It’s an old system that went down and went down everywhere. It got overloaded.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed there was no indication this incident was a cyberattack, stating, “It appears this was mechanically driven.” The FAA ordered the halt out of an abundance of caution while the communications issues were addressed.
Flight Disruptions and Airline Responses
Flight-data provider Cirium reported about 600 flights were diverted
on November 13, with 104 of those directed to alternate airports. Coastal hubs saw international flights resume departures before 6 p.m. ET as recovery efforts progressed. JetBlue Airways canceled the remainder of its November 13 flights, except for its European routes, and some flights scheduled for November 14 to reposition crews and aircraft. Airlines faced operational challenges as delays were expected to extend into the weekend and potentially beyond, due to the cascading effects of the prolonged stoppage and crew duty limits.
Federal Officials Call for $50 Billion in Infrastructure Funding
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy labeled the outage an emergency and urged Congress for an immediate $50 billion funding
boost to modernize the U.S. air traffic control communications network. He emphasized, “The systems that were deployed kept everybody safe — everyone landed. We’re able to review what went wrong and then reboot the system and go. But you will have more of these. You will have more of them unless the American people and the Congress tell us to build.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reassured the public that there was no threat to national security related to the outage.
Rarity of Nationwide Ground Stops and Infrastructure Challenges
Nationwide ground stops are rare in the U.S., with the last occurring after the September 11, 2001 attacks. A
similar full halt was issued in January 2023 due to pilot alert system failures. Recent years have seen repeated air traffic incidents linked to aging infrastructure and staffing shortages, including a 2025 communication failure at Newark Liberty International Airport and a Verizon fiber cable cut in September 2026 that disrupted flights at Newark and Philadelphia airports. These events have spotlighted vulnerabilities in the outdated telecommunications networks that underpin U.S. aviation safety and operations.
