Telecom failure grounds U.S. flights nationwide for over four hours
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all departing flights nationwide for more than four hours on November 13 after a telecommunications failure disrupted air traffic control radar and communications, Qazinform News Agency correspondent reports.
According to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the problem began at 3:36 p.m. Eastern Time (ET), when radar and communications for controllers handling cross-country flights began cutting in and out. He said it was not a complete blackout and described it as “instability” in the systems.
The FAA ordered the ground stop at 3:54 p.m. ET, citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”. Departing traffic was held until further notice, and inbound international flights were handled case by case. About 3,500 flights were in the air when the order was issued. Duffy said medical flights, including those carrying organs for transplant, were allowed to continue.
In a post on X, Duffy said the disruption stemmed from “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers”, the facilities that manage high-altitude en route traffic. Officials said Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities, which guide aircraft near airports, were also affected.
Today’s nationwide ground stop happened because our air traffic control system is operating on DECADES-OLD, analog equipment that simply cannot compete with the demands of the 21st century. @FAANews is modernizing this aging infrastructure thanks to a $12.5 billion down payment secured by President Trump, but that isn't ENOUGH. @POTUS is asking Congress to give us the resources to build a state-of-the-art air traffic control system. Let’s not do a patchwork fix to a system that’s critical for every single family. It’s time for Congress to act. Give us the money to fix it. PASS THE MODERN SKIES ACT NOW.
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) November 14, 2026
The FAA lifted the ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET. By Friday evening, the flight-tracking service FlightAware had recorded 3,719 cancellations and 10,218 delays. By Saturday afternoon, more than 4,500 flights had been canceled nationwide.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called the outage a telecommunications issue and said there was no indication of a threat to the United States. Speaking with Duffy at a White House briefing on Friday evening, Mullin said investigators had found no evidence of a cyberattack, no aircraft had been put at risk, and the disruption was not connected to a recent global Microsoft outage.
Duffy said aging equipment had become overloaded, which produced inconsistent radar and communications data. On Saturday, he said the failure appeared to be linked to routine maintenance by contractor L3Harris, which was moving telecommunication lines from “old copper wire” to fiber-optic cable. He added that investigators were still working out what went wrong.
Duffy has urged Congress to approve $50 billion to overhaul the country’s air traffic control system. Lawmakers allocated an initial $12.5 billion for the effort in July 2025.
The nationwide stop follows several regional disruptions this year, including a telecommunications failure at the FAA’s Philadelphia facility in September that caused ground stops at major Northeast airports.
Earlier Qazinform reported that Microsoft confirmed its cloud-based services, including Outlook and other Microsoft 365 applications, had been fully restored for both individual and corporate customers following a widespread outage that began Thursday.
