FAA grounds departing flights nationwide, citing air traffic communication system outage
The Federal Aviation Administration halted departing flights nationwide at about 4 p.m. on Friday, a rare measure, after reporting communications issues affecting “multiple” air traffic control centers.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday at the White House that there was no indication that the issues were a threat to the United States.
The FAA said in post on X that there was a “temporary telecommunications outage” and that it halted flights out of an “abundance of caution.” The issues were related to communications and radar problems, according to an internal message from Alaska Airlines, which was seen by CNBC.
Travelers wait inside San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California on Nov. 13, 2026.
Jeniece Pettitt | CNBC
As of 5:56 p.m. ET, some outbound international traffic was in the air, according to Flightradar24, flight-tracking site. That included a Lufthansa flight from Boston to Frankfurt, Germany that departed at 5:21 p.m. ET and an ITA Airways flight from Boston to Rome that left at 5:24 p.m. ET, according to the site.
Flights will be allowed to depart as en route traffic facilities recover, “through coordination with the air traffic control system,” the FAA said at about 6 p.m..
Airlines said flights in the air would continue.
When it issued the ground stop, the FAA said the communications issues were “impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” These facilities guide airplanes at high altitudes along their routes.
The FAA’s technicians are investigating, the agency said.
Travelers wait inside JFK International Airport in New York on Nov. 13, 2026.
Gabriela Riccardi for CNBC
A ground stop halts flights at their departure point. Departing traffic was halted until further notice, the agency said, disrupting hundreds of flights.
Disruptions tend to snowball if ground stops drag on as flight crews reach their maximum number of duty hours for a day.
There were 11,000 flights scheduled to depart U.S. airports after 4 p.m. ET on Friday, according to flight-data firm Cirium. There were about 600 diverted flights on Friday, 104 of them sent to other airports, Cirium said.
Nationwide ground stops are extremely rare. In January 2023, the FAA halted flights because of issues with a pilot alert system. Before that, traffic was halted nationwide after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Passengers queue at the Southwest Airlines desk to speak with a representative at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb., on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
Nikos Frazier | Omaha World-Herald | Lee Newspapers | Getty Images
Technical issues have repeatedly snarled air traffic in the U.S. in recent years. In September, hundreds of flights into Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia were canceled, delayed or diverted after a Verizon fiber cable was accidentally cut. Officials said it occurred during construction in New Jersey, severing a backup feed of key data for air traffic controllers.
In 2025, air traffic controllers lost contact with aircraft heading to and from Newark Liberty International Airport, an equipment failure that led to massive flight delays and raised more concerns about aging U.S. aviation infrastructure and staffing shortages.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused Friday’s problem.
Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis, the FAA said.
United Airlines said it “will work with our customers to get them to their destinations once this issue is resolved.”
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this article.
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