FAA Orders Nationwide Ground Stop Covering US Flight Departures
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the US agency that oversees American air travel, issued a nationwide ground stop on Friday, November 13, 2026, covering all flights due to take off in the United States. A ground stop is an order that keeps aircraft on the ground at their departure airports until it is lifted.
According to the Guardian, nearly 7,000 US flights were delayed or canceled as a result, based on figures from the aviation tracker FlightAware.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the stoppage was caused by a communication issue affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the facilities that guide aircraft between airports. FAA technicians were working to identify the problem.
The November 13 stop is the third time that all departing US flights have been grounded. The first occurred on September 11, 2001. The second came in January 2023, when the FAA paused all domestic departures for less than two hours after a pilot notification system malfunctioned.
The scale of the disruption reflects the size of the system. FAA data show that more than 44,000 flights take off from airports across the US each day, and the agency employs more than 14,000 air traffic controllers.
