Key facts
- More than 3,000 flights within, into or out of the US were canceled on Saturday, per FlightAware.
- More than 8,000 flights across the country were canceled on Friday, November 13, 2026.
- Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed the ground stop on an ageing air traffic control system.
- Duffy said the air traffic communications equipment became overloaded with data and gave inconsistent readings.
- Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication yet of a nefarious attack.
- Duffy said he planned to hold a news briefing at 10.30am ET on Saturday.
US airlines were working to recover on Saturday, November 14, 2026, after a four-hour nationwide Federal Aviation Administration ground stop, with more than 3,000 flights within, into or out of the US already canceled that day, according to flight tracking service FlightAware.
The ground stop, the longest nationwide one in 25 years, left passengers stranded at airports across the country. More than 8,000 flights across the country were canceled on Friday, November 13, 2026, and disruptions were reported at airports in Boston, Washington DC, New York and Miami.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Friday that the stop was caused by an ageing air traffic control system, saying the communications equipment became "overloaded with data and … they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers". He said: "Because of that, we shut the system down."
Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin said on Friday there was "no indication as of yet" that the communications failure had been caused by "a nefarious attack against us".
In a statement on Saturday, Duffy said "operations are slowly returning to normal this morning" but that travelers would continue to see some delays and cancellations as carriers reschedule flights and reposition aircraft and crews. He said he planned to hold a news briefing at 10.30am ET.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority said on Saturday morning that while US flights had resumed, there may be some follow-on disruption as airlines re-book affected passengers, and advised anyone due to travel between the UK and the USA to check with their airline.
During a briefing on Friday evening, Trump administration officials urged Congress to fully fund a full build of a brand new air traffic control system. Friday marked the third nationwide ground stop issued by the FAA this century, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and a January 2023 outage of a pilot notification system.
Sports events were also affected. The Southeastern Conference announced that Mississippi's game against Oklahoma had been rescheduled to Sunday, and a men's college basketball game between the University of North Carolina Greensboro and Cornell University scheduled for Saturday was postponed.