FAA lifts its nationwide halt on departing US flights, but over 3,000 US flights are canceled on Saturday
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its nationwide ground stop on Friday night after more than four hours, but over 3,000 US flights were canceled on Saturday.
The stop began at about 4 p.m. ET and was lifted at 8:15 p.m. ET. It was the longest nationwide halt of US departures since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The FAA said: "Before clearing flights to resume, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable."
Flight tracker FlightAware counted more than 3,000 canceled US flights on Saturday, as of 5:45 a.m. ET. That comes on top of about 9,000 cancellations on Friday, some of them caused by bad weather.
Many planes ended the night at the wrong airports. Airlines are flying one of their lightest schedules of the week on Saturday and adding every spare plane and crew they have. The airspace itself was running normally by 7:30 a.m. ET, CBS News reports.
United Airlines (UAL) said on X that it is working to restore its full schedule. It is waiving change fees and fare differences for affected travelers.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed aging equipment. He told reporters on Friday night: "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." Officials say new technology being added to the system overloaded the old equipment.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no cyberattack and no link to this week's Microsoft (MSFT) outage.
CBS News reports that the FAA's early findings point to Cisco (CSCO) 600 series routers built between 2001 and 2006. The faulty equipment has been found and isolated, CBS reports.
According to CBS, the outage began when an update to the FAA's private communications network made the system reboot and crash. L3Harris Technologies (LHX) runs that network and did not respond to CBS.
The stop began minutes before Friday's close, so most of the reaction came after hours:
| Stock | Friday close | After hours, from close |
|---|---|---|
| L3Harris Technologies (LHX) | +0.2% | -3.8% |
| JetBlue Airways (JBLU) | -1.3% | -2.9% |
| Delta Air Lines (DAL) | -0.4% | -2.5% |
| United Airlines (UAL) | -1.7% | -1.9% |
| American Airlines (AAL) | -1.1% | -1.8% |
| Southwest Airlines (LUV) | -0.6% | -1.3% |
Congress approved $12.5B last year to overhaul air traffic control technology. Mullin said the administration wants a complete replacement, at an estimated $50B. Duffy warned: "You will have more of them unless the American people and the Congress tell us to build."
Duffy expects flights to be "back up and operational" in time for the Thanksgiving travel rush.
Sources & Further Reading
- "The safety of the flying public is always the FAA's highest priority. The FAA lifted the ground stop and some flight departures are resuming." Federal Aviation Administration on X. November 13, 2026.
- "FAA lifts ground stop after more than four hours, but flight cancellations will stretch into the weekend." CNBC. November 13, 2026.
- "Flight disruptions continue after FAA lifts ground stop, some college football games delayed." CNBC. November 14, 2026.
- "FAA lifts nationwide ground stop that disrupted thousands of flights; White House says no indication of "nefarious act"." CBS News. November 13, 2026.
- "The FAA-issued nationwide ground stop has lifted. United is resuming operations, including some Friday night flights." United Airlines on X. November 13, 2026.
- "Thousands of flights canceled as airlines work to dig out from nationwide ground stop." Associated Press. November 14, 2026.
This article was drafted with the help of AI. Kris Gunnars fact-checked, edited and published the article and is responsible for its accuracy and quality. How we use AI
