FAA National Ground Stop, Thousands of Flights Canceled, Delayed
November 13th, 2026Via: Newsweek:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted a national ground stop on Friday night after a telecommunications outage grounded air traffic to a standstill for over four hours heading into the weekend.
Air space reopened at 8:15 p.m. ET, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a press briefing Friday night. “It’s going to take us some time to unwind what’s happened this afternoon.” He said that he believes air travel will resume to normal in time for the Thanksgiving blitz.
Instability was first noticed at 3:36 p.m. for radar and communications in centers, Duffy said. He added that when the ground stop was initiated, over 3,500 planes were in the air. Duffy said not all radar and communications were lost during the instability.
“What we have is an incredibly old air-traffic control system,” Duffy added. He said the switches and routers got “overloaded” with data and then started giving inconsistent information.
