Why It Matters
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights across the United States after communications failures affected numerous regional air traffic control centers. The disruption raised fresh questions about aviation communications systems, although officials said there was no initial evidence of a deliberate attack.
What Happened
The FAA ordered the nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, November 13, 2026. The order was scheduled to remain in place through at least 11:00 p.m. EST.
The agency said every flight had been accounted for. International flights were to be handled individually.
An unconfirmed report attributed the outage to an update involving a private communications network administered by L3Harris Technologies. The report said FAA telecommunications infrastructure rebooted, producing a communications outage.
Markwayne Mullin, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said there was “no initial evidence suggested ‘a nefarious attack against us.’” Mullin also said, “There is no reason to be concerned about your loved ones if they’re flying or anything like that.”
By the Numbers
November 13, 2026 — date of the nationwide flight grounding
November 14, 2026 — date shown on the FAA update
11:00 p.m. EST — scheduled minimum duration of the ground stop
More than 1,100 — flights canceled within two hours
11,000 — flights delayed within two hours
Zoom Out
The grounding occurred one day after a global outage took most Microsoft services offline. Microsoft and the federal government said the two disruptions were not connected.
The previous nationwide grounding listed in the source material occurred on January 11, 2023. The source also references September 11, 2001, in connection with terrorist attacks.
What’s Next
The FAA’s ground stop was set to continue through at least 11:00 p.m. EST, with international flights reviewed case by case. The cause of the communications failure remained subject to the unconfirmed account involving the L3Harris-administered network.