Summary
Every departing flight in the United States was held on the ground on Friday, November 13, 2026, after what the Federal Aviation Administration called “a temporary telecommunications outage” affecting the centers that manage aircraft between airports. As of 5:32 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, the FAA had not said the nationwide ground stop had been lifted and had not given a time for departures to resume. The agency’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center still listed a ground stop for all airports because of an equipment outage, with a filed window through 11 p.m. ET. The original advisory said departing traffic should remain “ground stopped until further notice.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials had “not discussed any time frame.” The public National Airspace System status page at nasstatus.faa.gov did not list a nationwide ground stop among airport-level programs at that check, though Atlanta’s delay feed cited a “national stop.” Travelers should confirm their own flights with their airline. What failed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA issued “a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” He said FAA technicians were investigating. The FAA runs 22 of these centers, which direct planes en route between airports. The FAA said there had been “a temporary telecommunications outage” and that “out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted. Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis.” Planes already in the air were allowed to land. The Command Center advisory said the stop was imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” Mullin told reporters at the White House there was no indication of “a nefarious attack,” and that the outage was not connected to an ongoing Microsoft outage. He also said the government did not yet know what caused the failure. The cause has not been confirmed. The ground stop came as the FAA replaces aging equipment. Congress approved 30.1 billion](https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2026/1113/1599187-us-flights/), in a letter from Duffy and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. Crews have been replacing old copper wiring with fiber optic lines. It is the first nationwide ground stop of all departures since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and only the second since the September 11, 2001, attacks. Make Tech Easier has previously looked at other older aviation systems, including navigation data once loaded from floppy disks on some 747-400s. In September, a smaller outage disrupted flights along the US East Coast. The FAA said then that error messages on a telecommunications circuit at a Philadelphia facility led its contractor L3Harris to switch to a backup fiber line. No link between the two events has been established. How to check your flight Airports including Atlanta, Miami and Washington Reagan told passengers to check their flight status directly with their airline. Airline apps and websites carry the operating carrier’s own status. Make Tech Easier has earlier guides to checking flights with iPhone apps and to Android apps that monitor flights. FlightAware counted nearly 7,000 delayed or cancelled flights, and Flightradar24 said 3,100 airborne flights were bound for US airports. The FAA publishes airport-level delay and ground stop information at nasstatus.faa.gov. Refunds Under US Department of Transportation rules, passengers are entitled to a refund if an airline cancels a flight “regardless of the reason” and they choose not to travel or accept vouchers or credits. The same applies to significant delays, defined as arriving three hours or more late on domestic trips or six hours or more late on international trips. Airlines must notify passengers of cancellations, significant delays and refund rights. If a passenger has signed up for email, text or app alerts, DOT says those notices must go out by the method they subscribed to. Passengers who take a delayed or rebooked flight are not entitled to a refund under DOT rules. The airline meal and hotel commitments listed on DOT’s customer service dashboard cover cancellations and delays within an airline’s control. Sources: AP; BBC; RTE; Reuters on the September outage.