FAA Orders Nationwide Ground Stop for All U.S. Airports Over Communication Failures

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports on Friday afternoon, November 13, 2026, halting departures across the country after communication problems hit multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers. The stop is in place until further notice, and the FAA has not given an end time.

Planes already in the air can continue to their destinations and land. Flights still on the ground stay at the gate. Inbound international flights are being handled case by case, so travelers flying to the United States from abroad may see departures held at their origin airport.

If your flight is canceled, you are owed a cash refund under federal rules, whatever the cause. Airlines may push travel credits first, but you do not have to accept them. Our breakdown of refunds, eCredits and change options during FAA disruptions walks through how the carriers handle these requests.

The FAA said its technicians are investigating the problem. An internal Alaska Airlines memo described the trouble as communications and radar issues. By late Friday afternoon, flight tracking data showed at least 8,000 delays and 400 cancellations across U.S. airports, and those numbers will keep climbing the longer departures stay frozen during the Friday evening rush.

What the FAA Has Said So Far

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described the problem as “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” “FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them,” he said. The FAA alert told controllers: “All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice.”

The agency’s statement is short. It confirms a ground stop covering all U.S. airports, ties it to communication problems at more than one Air Route Traffic Control Center, and says technicians are working on the cause. It does not say what failed, how many centers are affected, or when departures will restart.

Air Route Traffic Control Centers, known as ARTCCs or “Centers,” handle aircraft once they climb out of the airport area and cruise between cities. There are 20 of them covering the continental United States. When controllers at a Center lose reliable radio or radar contact, they cannot safely accept new traffic, so the FAA stops planes from taking off rather than send them into airspace it cannot fully manage.

No official has linked the outage to a cyberattack, a security threat or staffing. No official has ruled those out either. Until the FAA names a cause, treat claims circulating on social media with caution.

What a Nationwide Ground Stop Means

A ground stop is the FAA’s bluntest traffic tool. It orders aircraft to stay on the ground at their departure airports until the agency lifts it. Most ground stops cover one airport or one region and last under an hour, usually for thunderstorms, equipment faults or security threats. VisaVerge has covered several local ones, including the DFW ground stop that threw more than 1,300 flights into chaos.

A nationwide stop is different in kind. It freezes the entire domestic network at once, and every hour of it strands aircraft and crews in the wrong cities. Even after departures resume, airlines need many hours, often into the next day, to reposition planes and keep pilots and flight attendants within federal duty-time limits. Expect cancellations to continue through Saturday morning.

An airline can also ask the FAA for a ground stop limited to its own flights, as JetBlue did when a system outage halted its flights nationwide. Today’s order is not that. It comes from the FAA and covers every carrier.

How Rare This Is

Full national ground stops have happened only a handful of times. The two most cited are:

• September 11, 2001: The FAA closed U.S. airspace entirely and ordered every airborne flight to land. Commercial flights stayed grounded for days.
• January 11, 2023: The NOTAM system, which sends safety notices to pilots, failed overnight. The FAA halted all domestic departures until about 9 a.m. Eastern, and the day ended with more than 11,000 delays and over 1,300 cancellations.

The 2023 outage hit in the early morning, before the peak. Today’s stop began on a Friday afternoon, one of the busiest travel windows of the week, so the knock-on effects are likely to be larger even if the stop itself is shorter.

Is the FAA’s New AI Routing Tool Involved? What We Know and What We Don’t

No official has linked today’s ground stop to the FAA’s new AI air traffic tool, and none has ruled it out. The question is being asked because of timing. Three days before the outage, the FAA said its AI routing system, SMART, was active at all 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the same type of facility now reporting communication problems. What follows is analysis of what is publicly known, not a finding.

SMART stands for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories. It pulls together about 200 data streams, including weather, flight paths, traffic flow and staffing, and turns them into routing and scheduling recommendations for controllers. It was built by Air Space Intelligence and began limited operations on September 21, 2026 for flights around Reagan National, Dulles and Baltimore/Washington airports before expanding to every Center. The FAA has repeatedly said SMART only suggests routes, cannot take over control of an aircraft and does not replace controllers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put it this way in September: “Here’s the truth: HUMANS still control the airspace and HUMANS still make the calls.”

Not everyone was reassured. In October, more than 25 House members asked the FAA to pause the rollout, saying no safety evaluation had been published. “I’m calling on the FAA to pause this rollout, show us the safety testing, and explain who is accountable when something goes wrong,” said Rep. John Delaney. Later letters asked for independent and Government Accountability Office reviews.

Here is how the possibilities line up against what officials have said so far:

• Unrelated network failure (fits the facts best so far): The FAA and Duffy describe a communication issue, the kind of failure that cuts controllers’ radio or data links to aircraft and to each other. SMART is an advisory layer. It does not carry radio traffic or radar feeds, so a SMART fault by itself would cost controllers recommendations, not their ability to talk to pilots. The FAA’s aging telecommunications network has caused outages before, including the radar and radio failures that disrupted Newark in 2025.
• A side effect of a new system connection: Any software that plugs into Center data networks adds connections that can fail or overload. If the FAA’s investigation finds that a recently installed system, SMART or otherwise, strained a shared network, that would be a different story from a problem with the AI’s recommendations. There is no public evidence of this today.
• A cyberattack or deliberate act: No official has suggested this, and the FAA alert cites “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety” without naming a threat.

What would settle it: the FAA naming the system that failed, a statement from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association on what controllers saw on their screens, and any change to SMART’s status in the coming days. If the FAA pauses SMART while it investigates, expect lawmakers who sought a pause in October to press the point. For travelers, none of this changes today’s advice: the refund rules and rebooking steps below apply whatever the cause turns out to be.

Your Refund Rights if Your Flight Is Canceled

The Department of Transportation’s refund rule, in force since October 28, 2024, requires airlines to give an automatic cash refund when they cancel a flight or change it significantly and you choose not to travel. The rule applies regardless of the reason for the cancellation, so an FAA outage does not let an airline off the hook.

• Significant delay: a departure or arrival change of 3 hours or more on a domestic flight, or 6 hours or more on an international flight.
• Refund timing: within 7 business days for credit card purchases and 20 calendar days for other payment types.
• Credits are optional: you can accept a voucher, but the airline cannot make you take one instead of cash.

Federal rules do not require airlines to pay for hotels or meals when the cause is outside their control, such as an FAA system failure. Some carriers offer them anyway. Ask at the counter or in the app, and keep every receipt. Airline responses varied widely when the FAA ordered flight reductions at major airports, so check your own carrier’s policy rather than assuming.

International Travelers and Visa Holders

Travelers flying into the United States from abroad should check with their airline before heading to the airport. With inbound flights handled case by case, some long-haul departures may leave on time while others wait at origin. A missed domestic connection after landing is the most likely problem for arriving passengers.

If you are leaving the United States and your authorized stay ends today or tomorrow, a canceled flight can create a status problem. Keep the airline’s cancellation notice and your rebooking confirmation. Travelers on the Visa Waiver Program (ESTA) who cannot leave on time because of an emergency can ask CBP or USCIS for a period of satisfactory departure of up to 30 days. Others whose I-94 is about to expire should document the disruption and leave on the first available flight.

Students and workers returning to the United States for a start date, such as an F-1 term or an H-1B job, should tell their school’s international office or their employer about the delay right away. A one-day airline disruption does not affect visa status, but a written record helps if questions come up later.

What to Do Right Now

The steps depend on where you are in your trip. Use the table below, and check your airline’s app before you call: phone lines jam within minutes of a stop like this.

Once departures resume, airlines will clear the backlog unevenly, flying the most valuable routes and repositioning aircraft first. If your original flight is canceled late tonight, rebooking onto a Saturday morning flight through the app is usually faster than waiting in line at the counter.

This is a developing story. VisaVerge will update this article when the FAA lifts the ground stop or names a cause.

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