The United States lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday evening after a telecommunications failure at air traffic control centres halted departing flights across the country for more than four hours, in the longest such shutdown since the September 11 attacks.
Key Points
- FAA ground stop — the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all departing flights to stay on the ground at 3:54 p.m. ET on Friday, and lifted the order at 8:15 p.m. ET.
- More than 4,700 flights were cancelled and around 10,000 delayed on Friday, according to Flightradar24, with hundreds more cancelled for Saturday.
- The cause was a telecommunications outage affecting the country’s 22 air route traffic control centres; officials say there is no sign of a cyberattack.
- Airlines warned it could take days to restore normal schedules, with sports teams and weekend travellers among those stranded.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the stop was imposed out of an abundance of caution after a telecommunications outage affected the centres that handle flights travelling across the country. Aircraft already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations, and about 3,000 flights landed safely after the order, according to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. At the moment the order was issued, 4,042 flights were airborne and heading for US airports.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the trouble began at about 3:36 p.m. ET, when air traffic control centres experienced instability in radar and communications systems. He said overloaded switches and routers were responsible, and that the outage did not involve a total loss of communications or radar. Two airline officials told Reuters the failure appeared to involve a telecommunications network overseen by L3Harris Technologies, which carries the radio frequencies controllers use to talk to pilots. Mullin said investigators had found no indication of a deliberate attack.
The disruption was enormous. Flightradar24 counted more than 4,700 cancellations and 10,000 delays on Friday, while FlightAware put total cancellations near 6,000, including international routes. By late on Friday night, nearly 10,000 flights had been cancelled in total, including more than 2,200 each at Delta Air Lines and American Airlines and 1,800 at United Airlines. More than 700 flights had already been cancelled for Saturday, and over 2,000 remained cancelled on Saturday morning. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said about 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to depart US airports after 4 p.m. ET, and at least 827 flights had been diverted by Friday evening.
“It will take us some time”
Duffy warned that restoring normal operations would not be instant. “It will take us some time to restore capacity and we’re going to have some makeup to do,” he said at a White House briefing, adding that departures would resume gradually. American Airlines warned that disruptions and cancellations would continue despite the resumption of services, and JetBlue cancelled its remaining domestic flights for Friday evening. Air Canada suspended services between Canada and the United States for the rest of the evening.
The chaos spilled beyond airports. Professional and college sports teams scrambled for alternative transport, and the Ole Miss against Oklahoma college football game was pushed back to Sunday after the ground stop left the Rebels unable to travel. The disruption also affected international travel, forcing cancellations on flights from Canada and Europe.
An ageing system under strain
Friday’s stop was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a malfunction in the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions system disrupted air traffic across the United States. Officials blamed the latest failure on decades-old equipment, and the administration is seeking about $50 billion to overhaul the air traffic control network. The White House said the system had been neglected for years, and Duffy said the incident showed why modernisation could not wait.
For passengers, the advice is to check flight status before heading to the airport, as airlines work through the backlog of cancelled flights and displaced crews. The FAA said full functionality had been restored at air traffic control facilities, but the knock-on effects of a four-hour national shutdown are expected to be felt through the weekend.
For background on another major infrastructure failure this week, see our report on Microsoft 365 going down worldwide, and on the funding bill that ended the longest government shutdown. More in our US News section.
Sources: Al Jazeera, “FAA ground stop lifted: Why were US flights grounded, and what’s next?” (https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/11/14/faa-ground-stop-lifted-why-were-us-flights-grounded-and-whats-next); Reuters via The Express Tribune, “US to resume flights after air traffic network failure sparks chaos” (https://tribune.com.pk/story/2640293/us-to-resume-flights-after-air-traffic-network-failure-sparks-chaos).