The Federal Aviation Administration on November 13 issued a nationwide ground stop order citing "special circumstances and safety reasons," according to Xinhua News Agency.
On November 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C., U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin spoke to members of the media outside the White House. U.S. authorities suspended flights nationwide due to a communications problem affecting air traffic control, an extraordinary move that threatened to disrupt travel worldwide.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the air traffic control communications system had experienced a serious problem, but he stated that Trump administration officials did not know the specific cause and that fixing the issues would take considerable time. "This cannot be resolved within an hour," he said. "It will take some time." Mullin also said the ground stop was unrelated to this week's Microsoft system outage.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the malfunction in a social media post, noting that "all air route traffic control centers have been affected by the communications issue." He said: "FAA technicians are investigating the matter. We will release updates as soon as we have them." The agency issued a notice stating: "All departing flights should remain grounded until further notice."
A Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson said airborne flights may continue to their destinations. The agency also said inbound international flights would be managed on a case-by-case basis. Data from flight tracking website FlightAware showed that as of 5:40 p.m. Eastern Time on the 13th, more than 1,100 U.S. flights had been canceled and nearly 10,000 had been delayed. Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium showed that as of around 4 p.m., about 11,000 flights were still scheduled to depart from U.S. airports that day.
According to The New York Times, the ground stop on the 13th was the third nationwide flight ban issued by the FAA in recent years. Previously, the FAA issued nationwide ground stops after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, and on January 11, 2023, due to a failure of the FAA's safety alert system.
Mullin told reporters at the White House that "there was no indication beforehand, and there is no indication now, that this was a malicious attack against us." When asked whether it could be a cyberattack, Mullin said officials have not ruled out any possibility. "The public has no reason to be afraid or worried for their loved ones." Mullin said this was not "another 9/11."
Before issuing the notice, the FAA had suspended flights to Chicago O'Hare Airport and Midway Airport due to equipment problems, and reported delays at Newark, Las Vegas, Teterboro, Orlando, Houston, and Phoenix due to equipment issues. On social media, some passengers reported that planes taxiing at airports were forced to turn back to the gate, passengers were asked to disembark, and crew members said delays could last for hours. Other travelers said they were stranded on planes while gates were crowded with passengers.
According to The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, the malfunction appeared to affect a telecommunications network operated by L3Harris Technologies. The network handles critical radio frequencies for communications between air traffic controllers and pilots. It remains unclear whether the malfunction also affected radar data that controllers use to keep aircraft safely separated in the air.
In recent years, the U.S. air traffic control system has been plagued by communications problems, causing radio and radar outages that have affected multiple FAA facilities. Earlier this year, flights at New York-area airports were suspended after a contractor accidentally cut a fiber-optic communications line in New Jersey.
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