The Federal Aviation Administration grounded every departing flight in the United States on Friday afternoon. At 3:54 p.m. ET, the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center issued a nationwide ground stop "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety," ordering all departing traffic at all U.S. airports to stay on the ground until further notice.

The cause is a communications failure inside air traffic control. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted the FAA's statement at 4:16 p.m. ET, saying the stop followed a "communication issue" impacting all of the FAA's Air Route Traffic Control Centers — the 22 facilities that guide aircraft between airports — and the FAA said its technicians are investigating. The FAA's status board listed the reason as "EQUIPMENT / OUTAGE." The agency has not named a specific system that failed, and has not said when flights will resume.

Flights already in the air are allowed to continue and land. Inbound international flights are being handled case by case. The advisory listed an end around 11:30 p.m. ET, but the order itself says "until further notice" — the listed time is not a promise that departures resume then. As of late Friday afternoon, neither the FAA nor Duffy had announced that the stop had been lifted — though the FAA's status page stopped listing a nationwide stop at 4:26 p.m. without any statement on full resumption, so the picture is still shifting.

This is the first time the FAA has ground-stopped departures at every U.S. airport since January 11, 2023, when a failure of the Notice to Air Missions system halted flights nationwide — and only the second such stop since September 11, 2001.

What happened and what it covers

• Issued 3:54 p.m. ET, Friday, November 13, 2026, by the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center. The order covers all departing flights at all U.S. airports, for all aircraft operators.
• Scope: departures only. Aircraft already airborne continue to their destinations and land. Inbound international flights are handled case by case.
• Cause: a communications issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers, according to Secretary Duffy and the FAA's own statement. FAA technicians are investigating; no specific system or cause has been named, and no resumption time has been given.
• Duration: "until further notice." The advisory's listed window runs to about 11:30 p.m. ET, but that is an operational estimate, not a guarantee.
• Scale so far: FlightAware's tracker showed more than 2,400 delays on Friday afternoon, and Flightradar24 counted about 3,100 aircraft airborne and bound for U.S. airports at 4:19 p.m., with no additional aircraft taking off. A ground stop does not by itself cancel flights — airlines decide whether each flight is delayed, rescheduled, or cancelled — but with no departures moving, cancellations will follow.
• Separate from the shutdown cuts: the stop lands on the same day the FAA's ordered flight cuts at 40 airports deepen to 8%, rising to 10% on Saturday, November 14, if the government shutdown continues. Those cuts cover domestic flights between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.; international flights are exempt.

Why tonight is worse than the 8% cuts

The cuts were already the deepest disruption of the shutdown. The FAA ordered airlines to cut 4% of domestic flights at 40 of the busiest U.S. airports starting November 7, rising to 6% on November 11, 8% today, and 10% tomorrow. Airlines choose which flights to cancel and face a $75,000 fine for each flight operated over the limit. At the full 10% level, aviation analytics firm Cirium estimates about 1,800 flights and 268,000 seats would be cut each day.

The reason is staffing. About 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 airport security screeners have worked without pay since the shutdown began on October 1 — today is its 44th day, the longest in U.S. history — and the FAA was already about 3,500 controllers short of its staffing target before the shutdown began.

The ground stop is a different kind of problem on top of that. The cuts are a planned, percentage-based reduction that airlines can schedule around; a nationwide stop is an unplanned halt with no end time, and its recovery cascades: aircraft and crews end up in the wrong cities, and tonight's cancellations become tomorrow's missing planes. The 10% cut level arrives tomorrow, November 14 — less than two weeks before Thanksgiving on November 26, one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

The one mitigating fact is the refund rule. If an airline cancels your flight, it must refund you — cash back for a cash ticket, miles and fees back for an award ticket. What airlines are not required to cover is food or hotels when the disruption is outside their control, and a government-ordered ground stop is outside their control.

What to do if you're flying tonight

Check your flight before you leave for the airport. Use your airline's app or website, not the departure board at the terminal — the stop means your plane may not have left its previous city at all. If your flight is still listed as on time, check again before you go; status will change through the evening.

Do not count on rebooking tonight. With departures halted nationwide and the 10% cuts starting tomorrow, the rebooking queue will be long and the next available seats may be days out. If your trip can wait, take the refund rather than accepting a rebooking you do not want — a cancelled flight entitles you to a full refund, while a voluntary change does not.

If you are already at the airport, stay put until your airline tells you otherwise. A ground stop is not a cancellation: your flight may still operate once the stop lifts, and leaving the airport can mean losing your seat. But do not expect the airline to pay for a hotel if the flight is cancelled — that cost is on you tonight.

Award travelers: if your award flight is cancelled, your miles come back. Do not cancel a still-operating award booking yourself to chase a refund — let the airline cancel it, which triggers the refund. And do not transfer points speculatively to rebook tonight; with the stop's duration unknown, a transfer into an airline program cannot be reversed.

Awardtrail analysis

The honest answer tonight is that nobody knows when departures resume, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. The FAA's own advisory says "until further notice," and the cause — a communications failure across every control center — is the kind of problem that does not have a scheduled fix. If you have a flight tonight, check it, and if you can move it, move it to Sunday or later rather than Saturday, when the 10% cuts take effect on top of tonight's backlog. The stop will lift; the weekend will still be messy.

Primary source: FAA — National Airspace System Status

Verified: November 13, 2026