For about four hours on Friday, nothing took off in America. Not one departure, anywhere. Then at 8:15 PM, the FAA reopened the airspace and the planes started moving again. Here is what we know, in order.
What happened
At 3:36 PM ET on Friday, November 13, the FAA’s air traffic control centers and TRACONs started showing instability in radar and communications. At 3:54 PM, the FAA did the thing it almost never does: it ordered a nationwide ground stop. Every departing flight in the country stayed on the ground until further notice. Planes already in the air could land. Inbound international flights were handled case by case.
It was only the second or third time in American aviation history that every departure in the country was halted at once, depending on how you count the January 2023 NOTAM failure. The last full halt before that was September 11, 2001.
Why it happened
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy laid it out Friday night. The system’s switches and routers got overloaded with data and started handing controllers inconsistent information. Duffy tied it to old legacy equipment straining under technology upgrades. When the data cannot be trusted, the only safe call is to stop. So they stopped.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there is zero evidence this was a cyberattack, and no threat to the public. Every flight was accounted for the whole time.
When it ended
The FAA lifted the ground stop Friday evening. Airspace reopened at 8:15 PM ET and the cancellation went out shortly before 8:30 PM. All told, the stop ran a little over four hours.
Lifted does not mean normal. It means departures can go. The mess takes longer.
The damage, in numbers
Per FlightAware figures reported by AP and ABC News:
- Nearly 5,000 flights cancelled on Friday
- Nearly 800 more already cancelled for Saturday
- Delays ran into the thousands across the country Friday afternoon and evening
- Delta issued a travel waiver covering Friday and Saturday, letting passengers change flights at no extra cost
Those Saturday cancellations were already posted before Friday night ended. That is the tell. Airlines are not bouncing back overnight.
What travelers should do now
Planes and crews are out of position everywhere, and some crews have timed out, which means they legally cannot fly until they rest. If you are traveling this weekend:
- Check your flight status with your airline before you leave for the airport. Not at the airport. Before.
- If your flight was cancelled, rebook in the airline’s app first. It is faster than the desk line and faster than the phone.
- If you are on Delta for Friday or Saturday, use the waiver and change the flight for free instead of paying a change fee you do not owe.
- Build in slack. A Saturday morning departure feeding a connection is the exact shape of trip this kind of day breaks.
What we still do not know
Confirmed versus still developing matters here, so plainly: we do not yet have the FAA’s full accounting of which systems failed, in what order, or what the fix actually was beyond Duffy’s legacy network explanation. The FAA was expected to give another update around 11 PM ET Friday night. When that lands, we will update this post.
What is confirmed: the stop happened, it lasted just over four hours, the stated cause is overloaded legacy equipment and not an attack, and the recovery runs into Saturday whether the FAA says so or not. The cancellations already on the board say it for them.
Sources
- Associated Press, via ABC News and USA Today network coverage of the ground stop and its lifting, November 13, 2026
- IndyStar (USA Today Network): “FAA lifts ground stop, but getting flights back on track will take time”
- Palm Beach Post (USA Today Network): Florida ground stop live updates, flights resume after four-hour stop
- The Tennessean (USA Today Network): Nashville flights to resume as nationwide FAA ground stop lifts
- WVLT / Atlanta News First: “Nationwide ground stop lifted, FAA says”
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