FAA Nationwide Ground Stop Lifted After Communications Outage Grounded U.S. Flights

Update, Nov. 13, 8:40 p.m. ET: The FAA has lifted the nationwide ground stop. The agency says departures can resume, the Associated Press reported, and NPR said the stop lasted about four hours. The damage to schedules is big. As of 8 p.m. ET, more than 10,000 U.S. flights had been delayed Friday and 5,000 canceled, NPR reported, citing FlightAware, and ABC7 in San Francisco counted nearly 800 cancellations already on the board for Saturday. The FAA still hasn't said what broke in its communications system. Air Space Intelligence, which makes the SMART traffic-management tool the FAA has been rolling out, said on social media the stop was "not based on or a result of" its product, according to NPR. If you're flying this weekend, check your airline's app before you leave home; your refund rights are below.

Update, Nov. 13, 5:35 p.m. ET: Officials say an FAA communications outage at air traffic control centers caused the ground stop. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA ordered the nationwide stop "following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers," the 22 regional centers that guide planes between airports, and that FAA technicians are investigating, Reuters and the Associated Press reported. Speaking at the White House, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called it "a telecommunications outage," said there was no indication of an attack and said all flights were accounted for, according to the BBC. He also said officials couldn't rule anything out yet and didn't know how long a fix would take. Reuters, citing FlightAware, said nearly 7,000 flights had been delayed or canceled. The AP reported the order runs through at least 11 p.m. ET Friday. Our earlier report follows; parts of it written before the cause was announced are now out of date.

The message went out to every air traffic facility in the country a little before 4 p.m. Eastern on a Friday, at the start of a busy weekend travel window: nothing leaves the ground.

"Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety, all airports are ground stopped," the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center advisory said, as quoted by News 9 in Oklahoma City. A second line, reported by Axios, told departing traffic to "remain ground stopped until further notice."

That's about all the agency has said. The FAA didn't immediately comment further when CNBC asked, and as of this update it hasn't named a cause.

What the FAA nationwide ground stop means for flights

A ground stop holds departing flights at their origin airport. It doesn't order planes out of the sky. Flights that were already airborne when the order hit kept flying to their destinations, and the FAA said inbound international flights would be managed on a case-by-case basis.

So if you're at the gate right now, you're likely staying there for a while. If you're picking someone up, their plane may still land on time, assuming it took off before about 3:54 p.m. ET.

The order took effect at 2:54 p.m. Central time, according to the advisory as News 9 described it. Reports have differed on the end time listed in the notice, and the operative instruction is "until further notice." In practice, the FAA can lift a stop early, extend it or let airports restart in waves. Even once departures resume, expect the knock-on delays to run well into Friday night, because crews and aircraft will be out of position across the country.

How rare is this?

Very. ABC News reported that it's only the second time since Sept. 11, 2001, that a stop like this has been ordered. Axios called it "extremely rare."

The FAA puts out local ground stops all the time for storms, staffing shortages and equipment trouble. In March, a strong chemical smell traced to an overheated circuit board at a radar facility in Northern Virginia shut down flights at the three main Washington-area airports for several hours, Reuters reported. A halt covering every airport in the country is a different scale entirely. The closest recent comparison most travelers will remember is January 2023, when a failure in the FAA's pilot-notice (NOTAM) system led the agency to pause domestic departures nationwide for a couple of hours one morning.

Was there an air traffic control outage?

Yes. Officials now say a communications failure hit the FAA's en route centers (see the update at the top). Earlier Friday, before that was announced, the advisory itself didn't name a cause, and some aviation-watching accounts on social media had pointed to radio-frequency problems. What actually broke inside the communications system still hasn't been explained. Axios noted the FAA has been rolling out a new AI tool for managing airspace congestion, but said it's unclear whether that has anything to do with Friday's trouble.

What the FAA's own airport status page did show is trouble building before the national order. Chicago O'Hare and Midway were both under ground stops listed as "equipment outage" starting just after 3 p.m. ET. Newark, Las Vegas, O'Hare and Teterboro were showing departure delays coded to FAA equipment. Separately, San Francisco had a wind-related delay program averaging more than two hours, and LaGuardia, Boston and San Diego had their own weather or volume delays.

Reuters reported that the FAA halted Chicago traffic over air traffic control communications issues shortly before the national order, which suggests the two are linked, though the FAA hasn't laid out a timeline. We'll update this when the FAA or the Transportation Department explains what happened.

What to do if your flight is affected

The practical advice is pretty simple, and it's mostly about not leaving money on the table.

Don't cancel your own ticket yet. If you cancel, you're usually stuck with the airline's change rules. If the airline cancels or badly delays the flight, you have stronger rights.

Know the refund rule. Under federal law, an airline has to give you a full refund, including taxes and bag fees, if it cancels your flight or significantly delays it and you decide not to travel and don't accept a voucher. "Significant" means arriving three or more hours late on a domestic itinerary, or six or more hours late internationally, according to the Transportation Department. The reason for the cancellation doesn't matter. The statute gives airlines seven business days to refund a credit-card purchase and 20 days for other payment types.

Meals and hotels are a different story. The airline meal and hotel commitments that DOT tracks apply to delays and cancellations the carrier controls, like a mechanical problem or crew issue. An FAA-ordered ground stop usually isn't counted as the airline's fault, so don't count on vouchers. Ask anyway; some carriers hand them out during big disruptions.

Use the app, not the line. Rebooking through your airline's app or website is almost always faster than waiting at the counter with a few hundred other people. Calling the airline's international line, or reaching out on social media, sometimes gets through when the main number is jammed.

Watch the FAA's status page. The National Airspace System status page shows ground stops and delay programs by airport, and it's usually the first place a lifted stop shows up.

Bad timing for travelers

Friday afternoon is one of the heaviest flying windows of the week, and this weekend was already messy. A storm system is bringing the season's first widespread freeze and snow to parts of the East, and wind was already slowing arrivals into San Francisco and New York. Holiday fares were running high even before today; we looked at why in our piece on holiday airfare hitting a 10-year high.

It also lands at the tail end of a rough week for big systems. Microsoft spent much of Thursday and Friday working through the Outlook and Teams outage. There's no public information linking the two, and we're not suggesting there is. But it's a reminder of how fast one failure in a shared system can ripple outward.

This is a developing story. We'll add the cause and any official statements from the FAA or Transportation Secretary as they come in.