FAA lifts nationwide ground stop, White House says no indication of “nefarious act”

Updated on: November 13, 2026 / 8:58 PM EST / CBS News

A rare nationwide ground stop on all departing U.S. flights that lasted hours Friday has been lifted, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The FAA and White House said the issue appeared to be caused by a "telecommunication outage."

"At 8:15 tonight, Eastern time, we've opened up the airspace," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during a news briefing Friday night. "Now does that mean every flight is going to fly right now? It's going to be slow. So if you're watching, you're at an airport, check with your airline."

The FAA had issued the ground stop on all departing flights due to "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety."

Duffy attributed the ground stop to outdated air traffic control technology and routers overloaded by data.

"What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system," Duffy said in the news conference. "… Our routers actually got overloaded with data and … they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down."

An update to the private communications network that connects America's air traffic control system caused the…

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