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FAA Grounds Every Departing Flight in the Country — Only the Second Nationwide Stop Since 9/11
By Catalina Clarke
Photo: Benlisquare / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded every departing flight in the United States on Friday afternoon, ordering all aircraft still on the ground to stay there “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” The nationwide ground stop took effect at 3:54 p.m. Eastern time and remains in force until further notice, according to Reuters, CNN and USA Today.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the stop followed “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers” — the facilities that handle aircraft crossing the country — and that FAA technicians are investigating. Flights already in the air are being allowed to land. No plane on the ground may take off, and international flights inbound to the United States are being handled case by case.
The failure appears to have spread through the system before the nationwide order came down. Problems were first reported at the Kansas City center, and the FAA halted traffic in Chicago before extending the stop to every airport in the country, according to multiple reports.
What failed is not yet clear
The Air Current, an aviation trade publication, reported that the FAA cited “several impacts to ATC frequencies and/or radar capabilities,” and that the agency’s command center said it did not have further information on the timing or cause of the outage, according to Bloomberg Government’s account. Beyond the communications failure, the FAA has not named a cause.
The agency has also not said how many flights or passengers are affected, and it has given no estimate for when normal operations will resume. USA Today read the advisory’s listed window as running to 11:30 p.m. Eastern time, but the order itself directs departing traffic to remain stopped until further notice — the listed time is not a promise that flights resume then.
A measure not taken in almost a quarter-century, bar once
A nationwide ground stop of all departures is among the rarest actions in American aviation. The last one came on January 11, 2023, when the FAA’s pilot-notification system failed and departures were halted for roughly ninety minutes. Before that, the last nationwide ground stop followed the September 11, 2001 attacks — which makes Friday’s order only the second of its kind since 9/11, according to Reuters and CNN.
This is a developing story and will be updated as the FAA and the Transportation Department release more information.
Catalina Clarke
National Desk, The Library Media
Update, 1:46 p.m. PT: MS NOW reported that the assessment that this is not a national security matter came from the Justice Department, not the Defense Department, and that officials are treating the failure as a communications and frequency problem. As of this update, the Gang of Eight — the congressional leaders entitled to the government’s most sensitive intelligence briefings — had not been briefed. Two FAA sources familiar with the matter described a “rolling frequency outage” affecting the facilities that monitor aircraft in flight, according to the Washington Examiner, and an FAA spokesperson confirmed “communication issues impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” with technicians investigating. No official cause has been established.
What the public has not gotten is communication. The first rule of a crisis is to tell people what is happening. An hour into only the second nationwide grounding since September 11, 2001, the sum of the official word is one social-media post from the Transportation Secretary, an FAA advisory written for airlines, and a Justice Department assessment relayed secondhand through television. The President has said nothing publicly. The White House has issued no statement. The congressional leaders entitled to the government’s most sensitive briefings have not been briefed. Every departing flight in America is on the ground, millions of travelers are standing in terminals, and the government that stopped them has so far offered almost nothing in return.
## What we know, and what we do not
Known: the FAA ordered every departing flight in the United States held on the ground at 3:54 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, November 13, “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” Flights already in the air may land. Inbound international flights are being managed case by case. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributes the stop to a communication issue affecting all of the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Centers; FAA sources have described a “rolling frequency outage” at the facilities that monitor aircraft in flight. The Justice Department has assessed that this is not a national security matter. The FAA advisory runs to 11:30 p.m. Eastern time, but the order itself says “until further notice,” and no resumption time has been confirmed. It is only the second nationwide ground stop since September 11, 2001; the first was the NOTAM system failure of January 11, 2023. The President is scheduled to travel to Manila, Philippines, on Monday and Shenzhen, China, on Tuesday; nothing announced so far touches that trip.
Not known: the underlying cause. No official has established what failed or why. No agency has attributed the failure to any person, group, or country; claims circulating on social media blaming Iranian hackers are speculation, with no newsroom reporting and no official statement behind them. Whether the President was involved in the decision to ground the flights has not been addressed by anyone in the government. No count of affected flights or passengers has been released. The Gang of Eight has not been briefed. This page will be updated as officials say more.
Update, 2:13 p.m. PT: Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has become the first senior official to face cameras, telling reporters at the White House there is no indication of a nefarious attack — “This isn’t another 9/11” — confirming the President has been briefed, and offering no timeline for lifting the stop. Full coverage: ‘This Isn’t Another 9/11’: Homeland Security Secretary Mullin Says No Sign of an Attack Behind the Ground Stop.
Related coverage: the FAA finished switching on SMART, its $875 million AI advisory platform, at all 22 control centers this week — and the voice network that failed is the one Elon Musk spent a year attacking while Starlink angled for the FAA’s communications business. What is established, what is not, and the questions that now need answers: A Brand-New AI System Went Nationwide This Week — Then the FAA’s Radios Failed.
Update — 4:47 p.m. PT: The Guardian reports nearly 11,000 flights have been delayed or canceled — the first count of affected flights released since the stop began. (The Guardian, November 13, 2026.)
Update — 5:46 p.m. PT: The FAA lifted the nationwide ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET, The Hill reports. The stop lasted hours on Friday evening; nearly 11,000 flights were delayed or canceled, and the effects are expected to ripple through the weekend, with travelers stranded and airlines’ planes and crews out of position. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin briefed at the White House on Friday night. (Axios; The Hill, November 13, 2026.)
Update — the Friday night briefing: At a White House news conference Friday night, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the failure began with aging equipment: the FAA first saw unstable radar and communications data at 3:36 p.m. ET, and old switches and routers in the agency’s telecommunications network got overloaded with data and began producing inconsistent information, prompting the shutdown as a safety precaution. “What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said, adding that the agency still relies on “1980s little copper lines” — and that newer equipment held up while the old hardware failed. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials had seen “zero evidence” of a cyberattack, and officials ruled out any connection to the Microsoft 365 outage that began Thursday. Duffy also ruled out the FAA’s new SMART system: “There was no possible way SMART would have impacted what happened today.” Air Space Intelligence, which built SMART, said the same in its own statement: “The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, or any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.” One report, citing sources, pointed to a network update on the L3Harris-operated FAA telecommunications network as the trigger for a reboot and crash; no official has confirmed that account, and L3Harris has not commented.
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