FAA Grounds All US Flights November 13

The United States stopped its own skies on Friday. At roughly 4:30 p.m. Eastern on 13 November 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration alerted every aircraft operator in the country — "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety… all airports are ground stopped" — halting departing flights nationwide for only the third time in American history, and the first time ever for a non-attack reason still unexplained at lift-off.^[1][2]

Nearly 5,000 flights were canceled within the first hours; aircraft already airborne were allowed to continue to their destinations. The order ran through at least 11 p.m. Eastern, with no restart timeline offered at the government's 6 p.m. briefing.^[3][4]

What happened

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy, who briefed President Trump, described the failure as a communication issue affecting the 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers — the facilities that direct aircraft en route between airports, carrying the overwhelming majority of US air traffic.^[4] A simultaneous failure across every center meant controllers could not reliably communicate or coordinate — the condition under which the FAA shuts the system rather than risk aircraft it cannot safely separate.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin delivered the government's public line: there was "no indication yet" that the outage "was a nefarious attack," and he called it "just a telecommunications outage" — while refusing to rule a cyberattack out. "As we investigate what caused this, we always have to assume — as many cyberattacks take place — we make that assumption, but that's not known," Mullin said.^[2][5]

The known unknowns

Three facts make this event unlike a routine outage, whichever explanation wins:

• It is only the third nationwide stop in history. The first was 11 September 2001. The second was the January 2023 NOTAM database collapse. This is the third — and the first in which the trigger was never identified before the order went out. See Every Time America Grounded Every Flight.
• All twenty-two centers failed together. US air traffic control rides a single contractor-operated backbone — the L3Harris-run FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure — meaning one failure can ground the entire country. That backbone has been failing regionally on a near-monthly cadence for eighteen months. See The FAA Network That Keeps Failing.
• A new system went nationwide three days earlier. On 10 November, the FAA expanded its $875 million AI routing platform, SMART, from a three-airport trial to all 22 centers. DHS has named it a line of inquiry. See What Is SMART FAA AI Air Traffic System.

What investigators are examining

Officially, the cause is open. The live lines of inquiry, per administration officials and the public record: a fault in the shared telecommunications backbone; a cascade involving the SMART rollout; contractor or maintenance error; and — not ruled out — hostile action. Each is argued in full in companion coverage: the mundane case at Why The Skies Went Dark, and the darker thesis — that the outage could prove to be a demonstration strike amid the Jensen Huang scandal and five days before the APEC summit — at Chinas First Cyber Pearl Harbor and Five Days Before Trump Xi in Shenzhen.

For stranded travelers: your refund and rebooking rights under federal rules are spelled out at Is It Safe to Fly After the Ground Stop.

Timeline

• ~4:30 p.m. ET — FAA issues the nationwide alert; all departures halted
• 6:00 p.m. — Government briefing; "telecommunications outage," no restart timeline; SMART named as a line of inquiry
• Evening — Cancellation count approaches 5,000; airlines begin waiving change fees
• Through 11:00 p.m. — Stop remains in effect; airborne traffic unaffected

The story so far — complete coverage

• Every Time America Grounded Every Flight — 9/11, the 2023 NOTAM collapse, and now
• The FAA Network That Keeps Failing — the contractor backbone behind the outage
• What Is SMART FAA AI Air Traffic System — the new system under scrutiny
• Jensen Huang Resigns Inside the Alice Huang Scandal — the scandal framing the moment
• Volt Typhoon Explained — the documented PRC pre-positioning in US infrastructure
• Chinas First Cyber Pearl Harbor — the attack thesis, labeled as prediction
• Why The Skies Went Dark — the mundane-cause case
• Five Days Before Trump Xi in Shenzhen — the summit-timing analysis
• Hoax Bomb Threats Ground European Flights — the other air scare, last week