FAA Ground Stop Grounds All U.S. Departures After Communications Failure
A nationwide halt on aircraft departures caused by an air traffic control communications breakdown tests the resilience of U.S. Aviation infrastructure and raises questions about system redundancy...
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop on Friday, November 13, 2026, halting all aircraft departures across the country following a communications failure at air traffic control centers, according to Folha de S.Paulo. The FAA had not disclosed, as of the time of reporting, which specific equipment or system failed or what caused the problem.
The ground stop prevented aircraft on the ground from departing while permitting aircraft already airborne to continue to their destinations and land, according to Folha de S.Paulo. International flights inbound to the United States were being evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the FAA, the same report indicated.
Mexico's Benito Juarez International Airport, known by its abbreviation AICM, issued a warning to travelers that flights to and from the United States would be affected by the U.S. Restrictions, according to Reforma. The AICM did not specify the number of affected operations in its published advisory.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin stated at the White House that the disruption was the result of a telecommunications interruption and was not connected to any terrorist activity, according to Clarin. Mullin said directly: "This was a telecommunication disruption. There is no reason for the public to feel fear or worry about their loved ones. This is not another September 11."
The FAA has not publicly named the system responsible for the failure, what redundancies were activated, or how long the ground stop was expected to remain in effect. What would reveal the full scope of the technical failure is an official FAA incident report, which the agency had not published as of the time of this report.
A nationwide ground stop of this nature affects every commercial, cargo, and general aviation departure simultaneously across all U.S. Airports. Ground stops of this scale are rare; the most comparable event in U.S. Aviation history was the total halt ordered in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when the FAA grounded all civilian flights for several days. That event was security-driven, not technical.
In January 2023, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop due to a failure in the Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, system, a database that relays safety-critical information to pilots. That outage grounded approximately 11,000 flights and was later attributed to a corrupted data file, according to reporting by the Associated Press at the time. Congress subsequently held hearings on FAA systems reliability.
The 2023 NOTAM failure led to congressional scrutiny of FAA infrastructure funding and staffing levels at air traffic control facilities. The FAA, which employs approximately 14,000 air traffic controllers according to the agency's own workforce data, has faced documented shortfalls in controller staffing at multiple facilities in recent years.
The TCT has previously reported on the FAA's formal notification regarding this event. See: FAA Issues Nationwide Ground Stop Citing Air Traffic Control Communications Failure.
The economic effect of a full departure halt, even for a period of hours, includes missed connections, cargo delays, and airline rebooking costs that run into the tens of millions of dollars per hour across the U.S. Aviation system, based on data the Bureau of Transportation Statistics has published on prior ground stop events. Precise figures for this event are not yet available.
The FAA stated it would provide updates as the situation developed. No timeline for lifting the ground stop had been announced at the time of publication.