FAA Lifts Nationwide Ground Stop After Communications Failure Disrupts U.S. Flights
United States
What Happened
What Happened
Timeline
November 14, 2026
Widespread cancellations and delays: The disruption had a large follow-through: more than 4,700 flights were reported cancelled and around 10,000 delayed on Friday, with over 2,500 cancellations continuing into Saturday (November 14) as airlines worked to restore schedules. Thousands of passengers were stranded and airlines offered rebooking or refunds.
November 13, 2026
Technical cause identified as outage: Officials described the event as a 'temporary telecommunications outage' linked to equipment and network failures — CBS reported engineers pushed a routine update around 3:36 pm ET — and said there was no evidence the outage was a cyberattack. Reports noted ageing analogue equipment and routers choking on surges of data as contributing factors.
November 13, 2026
Nationwide ground stop lifted: The FAA imposed a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 pm ET on November 13, 2026, and after 4 hours 21 minutes (lifted at about 8:15 pm ET) officials reopened U.S. airspace and allowed departures to resume. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the reopening that evening, though full recovery was expected to take longer.
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Timeline
November 14, 2026
Widespread cancellations and delays: The disruption had a large follow-through: more than 4,700 flights were reported cancelled and around 10,000 delayed on Friday, with over 2,500 cancellations continuing into Saturday (November 14) as airlines worked to restore schedules. Thousands of passengers were stranded and airlines offered rebooking or refunds.
November 13, 2026
Technical cause identified as outage: Officials described the event as a 'temporary telecommunications outage' linked to equipment and network failures — CBS reported engineers pushed a routine update around 3:36 pm ET — and said there was no evidence the outage was a cyberattack. Reports noted ageing analogue equipment and routers choking on surges of data as contributing factors.
November 13, 2026
Nationwide ground stop lifted: The FAA imposed a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 pm ET on November 13, 2026, and after 4 hours 21 minutes (lifted at about 8:15 pm ET) officials reopened U.S. airspace and allowed departures to resume. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the reopening that evening, though full recovery was expected to take longer.
