FAA lifts nationwide ground stop after hours-long halt

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop at 8:15 PM Eastern time on November 13, 2026, after the suspension brought all flights to a halt for hours starting that afternoon. Hundreds of flights were canceled, thousands of flights already in the air were diverted, and millions of passengers were stranded.

What caused the ground stop

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the USA's "incredibly old air traffic control system" malfunctioned. The US still uses TDM telecom, a legacy analog telecommunications technology, to transmit information between facilities. Duffy said its routers got "overloaded with data," and by 3:36 PM on November 13, they started transmitting inconsistent information. He said equipment that had already been replaced was not affected, only the old ones. The US did not lose all communications and radar, but the FAA grounded flights out of an abundance of caution.

Officials respond

Duffy blamed old equipment and Congress's unwillingness to fund upgrades. He said, "It's going to continue to fail," and asked, "How many times does this have to happen for Congress to give the money to fix it?" The FAA has issued ground stops only three times this century, and this was the second longest after the 9/11 attacks. Congress has given the FAA $12.5 billion to modernize air traffic facilities, and Duffy has been trying to secure $30 billion more.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared with Duffy and said there was no indication the communication issues were caused by a cyberattack. Mullin said his agency was "still looking" and was "not going to rule it out." He also clarified the incident was not related to the lengthy outage that took out Microsoft's services for over 24 hours.

Impact at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport

At least 241 flights were delayed Friday and another 95 were canceled at ABIA, according to data from FlightAware. Hundreds more flights were delayed or canceled at other Texas airports. Austin airport officials said they expected it would take at least through Saturday morning for airlines to restore their schedules.

Among those grounded were the Texas Longhorns football team, which had already boarded a flight to play the Louisiana State University Tigers on Saturday at 6:30 PM in Baton Rouge. A statement from the Southeastern Conference says schedules may be adjusted if necessary.

An FAA briefing for airlines shared with KUT News said officials believe the outage involves cascading router failures in a communications network operated by L3Harris Technologies. The Florida-based defense contractor says its system connects more than 4,400 FAA facilities.

Why it matters

• The ground stop was the second longest in FAA history this century, after the 9/11 attacks.
• Hundreds of flights were canceled and thousands diverted nationwide.
• Officials cited aging air traffic control equipment and called for additional modernization funding.

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Sources

• engadget.com: FAA Allows Flights To Resume After Hours-Long Ground Stop Across The US
• kut.org: ABIA is mobilizing to help passengers during ground stop | KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.