The Federal Aviation Administration halted departing flights nationwide on Friday, November 13, 2026, after communications problems affected multiple air traffic control centers. More than 10,000 flights were disrupted by the stoppage, which began around 4 p.m. Eastern time.
The FAA described the incident as a temporary telecommunications outage and said it halted departures as a precaution. An internal Alaska Airlines message cited communications and radar problems. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication the disruption represented a threat to the United States.
Aircraft already in the air continued flying, according to airlines. The FAA said departures could resume as affected facilities recovered, while inbound international flights would be handled individually. Flight tracking showed some international departures from Boston by late afternoon, followed by flights from the West Coast to Asia and Hawaii.
The affected Air Route Traffic Control Centers guide aircraft at high altitudes. FAA technicians were investigating, and the cause remained unclear. Cirium reported that approximately 11,000 flights had been scheduled to depart U.S. airports after 4 p.m., underscoring the number of services potentially exposed to delays.
Nationwide ground stops are rare. A January 2023 outage involving a pilot alert system also prompted a nationwide departure pause. Other recent disruptions included a September fiber cable cut affecting Newark and Philadelphia, and equipment failures at Newark Liberty International Airport in 2025 that interrupted communications between controllers and aircraft.