WASHINGTON / MENA Newswire / – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop on Friday, November 13, suspending departures from all U.S. airports after a communications outage hit air traffic control centers. The FAA said the problem affected Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which guide high-altitude traffic across the country. The agency lifted the order at about 8:15 p.m. ET, more than four hours later.
The ground stop began at about 4 p.m. ET, according to CNBC. The FAA described the disruption as a temporary telecommunications outage affecting multiple centers and said its technicians were investigating. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the communications issue prompted the nationwide halt, while incoming international flights were handled on a case-by-case basis. Air Route Traffic Control Centers handle aircraft flying between airports at cruising altitudes.
About 11,000 flights carrying roughly 1.5 million passengers had been scheduled to depart after 4 p.m. ET, according to aviation data firm Cirium. Around 600 flights were diverted. JetBlue canceled the rest of its Friday flights except routes to Europe, as well as some Saturday flights. Delays and cancellations were expected to stretch into the weekend. The disruption came on a Friday evening, one of the busiest periods of the travel week.
Overloaded routers blamed
Duffy told reporters late Friday that telecommunications routers were overloaded with data and went down. Duffy said there was no total loss of communications or radar, and that officials were still working on the details of what went wrong. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the outage did not appear to be a cyberattack and seemed to be mechanically driven. CBS News reported that an update to the network linking the air traffic control system caused a reboot.
Duffy warned that the aging air traffic control system is going to continue to fail without more investment, and urged lawmakers to provide more funding for an ongoing overhaul. The system has faced repeated strains, including widespread delays during last year’s government shutdown. International departures from coastal hubs began resuming before 6 p.m. ET, CNBC reported. The FAA is in the middle of a multiyear effort to replace aging equipment.
Second nationwide halt since 2001
The ground stop was only the second nationwide halt of departures since 2001. The previous one came in January 2023, when a failure of the pilot alert system grounded flights across the country. That outage also forced the FAA to halt departures nationwide for several hours. Airlines have also struggled with weather disruptions this year, including a winter storm that disrupted flights nationwide in March. The outage comes weeks before the busy Thanksgiving travel period.
Departures resumed gradually after the order was lifted, through coordination with the air traffic control system, the FAA said. Delays were expected to continue as airlines rebuilt schedules. The FAA has not given a final count of affected flights. The cause of the router failure remains under investigation, and officials have not said when a full account will be released. Travelers can check flight status with their airlines.