Thousands of Flights Canceled as FAA Lifts Longest Nationwide Ground Stop in 25 Years, Travel Disrup

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom

WASHINGTON — Thousands of airline passengers remained stranded Saturday, Nov. 14, after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, allowing flights to resume following a widespread telecommunications failure that disrupted air traffic control operations across the United States.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that U.S. airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. Eastern time Friday, approximately four hours and 40 minutes after the FAA began experiencing instability in its communications and radar systems. Although some flights departed shortly afterward, airlines continued canceling thousands of scheduled departures as they worked to reposition aircraft and flight crews.

According to the latest Associated Press reporting, more than 2,500 U.S. flights had been canceled Saturday, with hundreds more delayed, as airlines struggled to restore normal schedules.

The disruption followed extensive cancellations Friday. Reuters reported that Flightradar24 recorded nearly 10,000 canceled flights by 11:30 p.m. Eastern time, including more than 2,200 each involving American Airlines and Delta Air Lines and approximately 1,800 involving United Airlines. FlightAware reported different cancellation totals, reflecting differences between the tracking services.

The nationwide ground stop was the longest since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The FAA previously halted domestic departures for approximately 90 minutes in January 2023 following a malfunction of its Notice to Air Missions system.

The latest shutdown began after air traffic controllers experienced inconsistent radar information and communications problems at facilities responsible for managing aircraft movements across the country.

In an official statement published Friday, the FAA confirmed that communications issues affecting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers prompted the nationwide restriction.

The agency described the ground stop as necessary because of “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”

During a White House briefing with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Duffy said the instability began at approximately 3:36 p.m. Eastern time.

“At 3:36 p.m., we experienced instability for our radar and our communications and our centers and our TRACONs across the country,” Duffy said.

The secretary explained that the failures affected Air Route Traffic Control Centers and Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities, which coordinate aircraft movements between airports and manage planes approaching or departing major metropolitan areas.

“We didn’t lose all telecom, we didn’t lose all radar,” Duffy said, explaining that the inconsistent information nevertheless required officials to suspend departures while technicians examined the problem.

Approximately 3,500 aircraft were airborne when the disruption began. Controllers used established emergency procedures to manage those flights, and federal officials said more than 3,000 aircraft landed safely during the shutdown.

Mullin emphasized that officials had not identified any immediate danger to passengers aboard aircraft already in flight.

The administration attributed the failure to aging communications infrastructure that became overloaded while newer technology was being introduced.

“Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data and they…started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers, and because of that we shut the system down,” Duffy said.

He added that newly installed equipment remained operational while older components experienced problems.

The affected infrastructure included telecommunications equipment used to transmit essential communications and radar information between air traffic control facilities.

According to CBS News, sources familiar with the disruption said an update to the private communications network supporting air traffic control caused equipment to reboot, contributing to a network failure.

The network is operated by L3Harris Technologies, which holds a federal contract involving the FAA’s telecommunications infrastructure. The company had not publicly commented on its possible involvement in Friday’s disruption.

Officials said the precise technical sequence responsible for the failure remained under investigation.

Mullin also addressed questions about whether the outage involved a cyberattack or was connected to a separate Microsoft service disruption that began Thursday.

“There is no connection between this and Microsoft,” Mullin said during Friday’s briefing.

He said investigators had found no evidence of a cyberattack, although federal agencies continued examining the incident.

The National Security Agency was assisting the Department of Homeland Security with the investigation, according to Reuters.

Duffy also rejected suggestions that the FAA’s new artificial intelligence-based Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories system, known as SMART, contributed to the shutdown.

“SMART is completely disconnected,” Duffy said, explaining that the technology was not connected to the affected communications infrastructure.

Before authorizing departures to resume, the FAA tested its systems to verify that communications and radar information had stabilized.

“Before clearing flights to resume, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable,” the agency stated.

However, restoring the technical systems did not immediately resolve the disruption to airline operations.

“At 8:15 tonight, Eastern Time, we’ve opened up the airspace,” Duffy said Friday. “Now, does that mean every flight is going to fly right now? It’s going to be slow.”

Airlines faced shortages of available aircraft and crews because of the prolonged suspension. Planes were stranded at airports far from their scheduled destinations, while pilots and flight attendants faced federal limits on working hours.

United Airlines canceled most of its remaining Friday departures, with limited exceptions for international services.

JetBlue also canceled its remaining Friday flights except for certain Europe-bound departures from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Boston Logan International Airport.

Air Canada canceled its remaining Friday flights between Canada and the United States.

American Airlines said it was prioritizing international flights and services to smaller cities outside its major hubs to help reposition aircraft and employees.

The interruption affected major airports in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Seattle and other cities.

At Los Angeles International Airport, passengers faced extensive delays and cancellations, while some arriving aircraft waited hours for gates occupied by planes unable to depart.

Reuters documented stranded passengers at airports across the country, including travelers forced to find overnight accommodations after scheduled flights were canceled.

At Newark Liberty International Airport, Edward Kargbo, 50, of Pennsylvania, was unable to depart on his scheduled flight to Togo and expected to spend the night at the airport.

“I’m stranded,” he said.

The shutdown also disrupted travel arrangements for professional and college athletic teams with scheduled weekend games.

Auburn University’s football team arranged bus transportation to Mississippi State after aviation disruptions interfered with its plans. The game was moved from noon to 4:15 p.m. Eastern time Saturday.

Other affected college programs included Baylor, Washington, Kansas State, Minnesota and Mississippi, according to the Associated Press.

Duffy said the FAA would work with airlines to restore as many flights as possible while maintaining safety requirements.

“If not, we’re going to start tomorrow morning with our airline partners moving those aircraft,” Duffy said Friday. “But it’s going to take us some time to unwind what’s happened this afternoon.”

Federal officials said the broader recovery could last several days because aircraft and crews were no longer positioned to operate their original schedules.

Airlines also face the approaching Thanksgiving travel period, one of the busiest periods of the year for U.S. aviation.

Duffy said he expected the system to be operating normally before the holiday travel rush, although he did not provide a specific date for complete recovery.

The incident has renewed attention to the FAA’s aging air traffic control infrastructure, which has experienced several significant disruptions in recent years.

Congress approved $12.5 billion for modernization projects in 2025, allowing the agency to begin replacing thousands of older copper communications lines with fiber-optic connections and upgrading hundreds of radio systems.

The Trump administration is seeking approximately $30 billion in additional funding to complete the broader modernization program, which officials estimate could cost approximately $50 billion.

Duffy warned Friday that additional failures could occur before the modernization effort is completed.

“We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” he said. “We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these.”

The FAA’s telecommunications infrastructure has previously been identified as vulnerable to failures because of obsolete equipment.

A safety review commissioned by the agency in 2023 warned that portions of its communications network relied on outdated technology and that unexpected equipment failures could disconnect air traffic control facilities from essential systems.

Friday’s nationwide shutdown followed a regional communications outage in September that disrupted hundreds of flights in the northeastern United States. That incident was attributed to a damaged fiber-optic cable.

The 2023 nationwide ground stop resulted from a separate malfunction involving the system used to communicate safety notices to pilots.

Federal officials have not announced that Friday’s incident resulted from a security breach or deliberate interference.

With the nationwide ground stop lifted, airlines resumed departures Saturday while continuing to cancel flights and adjust schedules to accommodate displaced passengers.

Travelers affected by cancellations were advised to check directly with their airlines for updated departure information, rebooking options and available refunds. Because the disruption originated with the FAA rather than individual airlines, carriers generally are not required to provide additional compensation for delays attributable to the government system failure.

As of Saturday morning, flights were operating again across the United States, but thousands of cancellations remained in effect as airlines continued recovering from the nationwide shutdown.