FAA Halts All US Departing Flights After Telecom Outage at Control Centers
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all departing flights nationwide on Friday, November 13, after a telecommunications outage hit its air traffic control centers. Officials said there was no sign of an attack, but gave no timetable for lifting the stop.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all departing flights across the United States on Friday, November 13, 2026, after a telecommunications outage hit its air traffic control centers. Nearly 7,000 US flights were delayed or canceled, according to the aviation tracker FlightAware.
Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare.
The FAA said in a post on X that a "temporary telecommunications outage" led it to halt flights out of an "abundance of caution." It said departures were stopped until further notice "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." Technicians are investigating.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X the stoppage stemmed from "a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers." These centers guide aircraft at high altitudes along their routes.
Airlines said flights already in the air would continue. The FAA said inbound international flights would be handled case by case.
No sign of an attack
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at the White House that the problem was not a threat to the United States. He also said it was not linked to this week's Microsoft outage.
"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," Mullin told reporters.
Law enforcement sources said that preliminary reports indicate it was not a cyberattack. President Donald Trump has been briefed. Mullin said officials have not discussed a time frame for a fix and warned that resolution will take time.
Scale of the disruption
Flight-data firm Cirium counted 11,000 flights scheduled to depart US airports after 4 p.m. ET on Friday. An internal Alaska Airlines message described communications and radar problems.
Disruptions tend to snowball if a ground stop drags on, because flight crews reach their maximum duty hours for the day.
Southwest Airlines told employees it was "actively working with the FAA for resolution." United Airlines said it would work with customers to get them to their destinations once the issue is resolved.
This is the third time all US departures have been grounded. The first was after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The second came in January 2023, when the FAA paused domestic departures for less than two hours after a pilot notification system failed.
The FAA has more than 14,000 air traffic controllers handling more than 44,000 flights a day, according to FAA data. Last week, the agency said the first digital air traffic control towers in the US were operational in Alaska and Florida, part of a modernization project meant to reduce delays.
