US Aviation Administration Resumes Flights After Four-Hour Halt
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop at 8:15pm Eastern on Friday after more than four hours. Thousands of flights were delayed or canceled. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed overloaded routers in an aging air traffic control system.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted a nationwide ground stop at 8:15pm Eastern time on Friday, November 13, ending a halt on departing flights that lasted more than four hours. The aviation administration resumes flights after issuing the order at 3:54pm, citing a "communication issue" at air traffic control centers.
Aviation tracker FlightAware counted more than 11,000 US flights delayed or canceled. Airports were thrown into sudden chaos, and airlines now face the task of getting aircraft and crews back into position.
What officials said caused it
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the airspace was open again and the problem had been identified. He said the system "is operational right now".
Duffy blamed aging infrastructure. "Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data and they started to give us inconsistencies in the data from those routers," he said. "And because of that we shut the system down."
He added that at no stage did officials completely lose radar or communications. The FAA said it "thoroughly tested" its systems before clearing flights to resume.
The problem hit all 22 air route traffic control centers, which guide aircraft. Duffy said more than 3,500 airplanes were in the air when the order was issued.
No sign of an attack
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said early findings pointed away from a deliberate attack. "There's no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against it. It's just a telecommunications outage as of right now," he told reporters.
Mullin said officials had not ruled out a planned rollout of a new AI tool for air traffic controllers as a possible cause. "You just can't rule out anything at this point," he said. Air Space Intelligence, the company behind the FAA's AI-powered air traffic management system, said its technology was not responsible.
Mullin also said President Donald Trump had been regularly briefed. Trump had not spoken publicly about the disruption by the time of the briefing.
Passengers and politicians react
Duffy warned the recovery would take time. "It's going to take us some time to unwind what's happened this afternoon," he said.
At John F Kennedy airport in New York, a traveler who gave her name as Lola said she had already rebooked her Atlanta flight for another day and was heading home. "I don't like it," she said.
Duffy and Mullin used the White House briefing to press Congress for money to build a new air traffic control system. California Governor Gavin Newsom said Americans stuck at airports deserved clear updates and a plan to get home.
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth called for a full investigation. "The safety of our skies is built on redundancies. Whatever led to the nationwide ground stop will warrant a thorough and complete investigation," she wrote on X.
