FAA Ground Stop Hits 13,000 Flights in Longest US Grounding Since 9/11

More than 13,000 US flights were delayed or cancelled after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a rare nationwide ground stop on Friday evening, November 13, 2026 — the longest grounding of American air traffic since September 11, 2001.

The FAA halted all departing commercial flights across the United States at 3:54 PM ET, citing "extraordinary circumstances." The order stayed in force until roughly 8:30 PM ET, about four and a half hours. Aircraft already airborne continued to their destinations, and military, medical and law enforcement flights kept operating.

The disruption triggered knock-on suspensions across Europe and Canada, and officials warn recovery will take days, not hours.

What caused the ground stop?

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said communications switches and routers became overloaded with data and failed, causing communications towers to broadcast inconsistent information and blocking publication of air traffic safety notices.

"What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system… So we have TDM telecom. So this is analogue telecom," Duffy said. "Our routers actually got overloaded with data and they started to give us inconsistent data and because of that, we shut the system down."

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed the failure was strictly technical. Officials stressed there was no indication of a cyberattack or terror threat.

How big was the operational hit?

Numbers cited by The Wall Street Journal put delayed or cancelled flights above 13,000 for the evening. Tracking service FlightAware recorded more than 10,300 delays and nearly 1,500 outright cancellations by late Friday.

The impact spread well beyond US airspace:

• European carriers, including Aer Lingus, temporarily suspended US-bound departures; airlines in England, France and Germany did the same.
• Major Canadian airports in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver saw significant delays and suspensions.
• At Dublin airport, inbound Aer Lingus flights from Washington (EI116, due 05:05) and Chicago (EI424, due 09:30) were cancelled.

What happens next?

Aviation officials expect several days of schedule churn as airlines clear the backlog. Thousands of aircraft and flight crews are now out of position for their assigned weekend routes, a displacement that typically forces cascading cancellations and rebookings far beyond the original outage window.