The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted its nationwide ground stop on Friday evening, November 13, after a communications failure halted departures across the United States for more than four hours. Airlines resumed operations, but thousands of cancellations and delays are expected to disrupt schedules throughout the weekend.
According to flight-tracking data cited by Reuters, more than 4,700 flights were canceled and 10,000 delayed on Friday. Another 700 cancellations had already been recorded for Saturday, November 14.
The FAA began restoring departures gradually before ending the nationwide restriction at approximately 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time. Aircraft already airborne had been permitted to continue their flights during the shutdown.
Aging technology under scrutiny
At a White House briefing, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the disruption to overloaded equipment in the country’s aging air traffic control communications network.
Duffy said instability began around 3:36 p.m. Eastern Time, affecting radar and communications systems at air traffic control facilities across the country.
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According to the secretary, switches and routers operating on older telecommunications technology became overwhelmed by data and began providing inconsistent information. The FAA suspended departures as a safety precaution.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of a cyberattack. The technical investigation remains underway.
The incident has raised further questions about the condition of the US air traffic control infrastructure, which is undergoing a multibillion-dollar modernization program.
The government has already secured $12.5 billion for upgrades, including replacing copper communications lines and outdated radio equipment. Duffy has called for additional funding to complete the modernization.
Officials also addressed questions about SMART, a new air traffic management system introduced across the FAA’s 22 regional control centers earlier in the week. Duffy denied that the system caused the outage.
Airlines face days of disruption
Although the national ground stop has ended, restoring normal airline operations will take considerably longer.
Aircraft and crews were left in different locations from those planned, and airports faced congestion as departures resumed. Some airlines canceled remaining flights on Friday evening rather than attempt to recover their schedules immediately.
The disruption also affected international operations, including flights between the United States and Canada and Europe.
The shutdown was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a failure in the FAA’s system for distributing operational notices to pilots interrupted departures for approximately 90 minutes.
Friday’s interruption lasted more than four hours, making it the longest nationwide shutdown of US departures since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
See also: US controllers still rely on floppy disks; UK flight-plan processing outage.
