FAA Halts Every US Departure After a Telecommunications Outage Hits Its En Route Control Centers

The FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights at US airports on Friday, November 13, 2026, after a communications failure hit the centers that control high-altitude traffic. The order went out at 3:54 p.m. ET, according to NBC News, and it is the first time since January 2023 that departures have been halted across the whole country.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X at 4:16 p.m. ET that the stop followed “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” He said FAA technicians were investigating.

What the FAA ordered

The FAA’s alert cited “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety” and said all departing traffic should remain on the ground until further notice, as NBC News reported. Inbound international flights were to be handled case by case.

Flights already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations, American Airlines said in a customer update. The airline said it expected disruption for the rest of the day, depending on how long the stop lasts.

Shortly before the national order, Chicago O’Hare and Midway had been placed under their own ground stop for an equipment outage. United said new domestic flights would not depart while the FAA ground stop remained in place.

How big the disruption is

Flightradar24 counted about 3,100 aircraft in the air and bound for US airports when the stop began, and FlightAware listed at least 8,000 delays and 400 cancellations within a short time, CBS News reported.

The stop also landed at a busy hour. Flight data firm Cirium told CNBC that 11,000 flights were scheduled to leave US airports after 4 p.m. ET on Friday.

Arrivals kept landing while nothing left, so parking space ran short at some hubs. By 6 p.m., Reagan Washington National was at capacity and O’Hare was close to it, according to a source cited by NBC News.

What caused it

Officials have described the failure as a telecommunications outage, not a cyberattack. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters there was no indication yet of “a nefarious attack,” calling it “just a telecommunications outage as of now,” ABC News reported.

Mullin also said the government was not ruling anything out. The Associated Press reported that investigators will check whether the FAA’s nationwide rollout of a new AI-based traffic management system is linked to the outage; no official has said that it is.

Neither the FAA nor the Department of Transportation has said which circuits, provider or equipment failed. At the time of writing, about 6:15 p.m. ET Friday, the FAA had not announced that the stop was lifted or given a time for departures to resume.

Why a phone-line failure can stop a whole country

The US has 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers, and between them they handle flights above 18,000 feet on the way between airports. They are the link in the chain every airliner passes through, no matter where it starts or ends.

A communications failure at a center threatens the one thing controllers cannot work without: talking to pilots. Crews are trained to handle a radio loss, but rather than add more aircraft to a system that may not be able to reach them, the FAA stops the flow at the source with a ground stop and lets the airborne traffic land.

One center going dark is disruptive enough. In August, an equipment failure at the Minneapolis center grounded flights across nine states for about two hours. Friday’s outage touched every center at once, which is why the order covered every airport.

A pattern of telecom failures

Friday’s outage follows other recent disruptions that started with communications links rather than radars or computers. In September, a failed circuit and a cut backup cable stopped flights at five Northeast airports handled by the Philadelphia approach facility.

The last nationwide departure halt came on January 11, 2023, when the FAA’s NOTAM system for alerting pilots to hazards failed. That stop ran from 7:30 a.m. to about 9 a.m. ET, and more than 10,000 flights were delayed that day.

Friday’s outage also landed on the same day the administration pressed Congress for money. Hours earlier, the White House urged lawmakers to provide $30.1 billion for aviation reform, Reuters reported, building on Duffy’s earlier funding push to rebuild the air traffic control system.

This story is developing. AeroCorner will add the time the ground stop was lifted and the FAA’s account of the cause once they are confirmed.