FAA declares rare nationwide ground stop on flights, with nearly 10,000 canceled so far

By Claudia Assis

Agency cites 'extraordinary circumstances,' while Homeland Security Secretary Mullin says no indication of attack

Planes wait on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport in New York during the nationwide ground stop.

The Federal Aviation Administration declared a rare nationwide ground stop on Friday, citing a "communication issue" impacting air-traffic-control centers and "extraordinary circumstances."

According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, FAA technicians are investigating the issue.

Speaking with reporters outside the White House late Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that the issue stemmed from "a telecommunication outage" and that there were no indications of a "nefarious attack."

Mullin said that the issue is going to take "some time" to resolve, and he added that the Trump administration is looking into whether the problems were connected with the rollout of a new artificial-intelligence system by the FAA.

Nearly 10,000 flights within, into or out of the U.S. have been delayed on Friday, according to FlightAware. Total cancellations surpassed 1,500 flights, including nearly 900 U.S. flights canceled.

The aviation analytics company Cirium estimated that more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to fly in the U.S. on Friday from 4 p.m. Eastern onward.

According to Cirium, there are 26,284 flights scheduled to depart today from the U.S., including about 11,000 that were slated to take off after 4 p.m. Eastern.

U.S. airlines operate on tight schedules and have cut flights in recent months as a response to rising jet-fuel costs. That means people affected by Friday's outages may have fewer rebooking options once systems are back up, which could extend the headaches for travelers for days.

The most affected airports Friday included New York's John F. Kennedy as well as Boston's Logan and San Francisco International.

"This has been in the making for the last 20 years, in terms of air-traffic-control modernization," said Ernie Arvai, president of AirInsight Group.

"We have talked about it forever and not done much about it," he said. "I feel bad for all the people today who are going to be stuck."

The last time there was a nationwide ground stop was in January 2023, after the failure of a pilot-alert system. Before that, the only such nationwide stop was after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We are watching aviation history," said Katy Nastro, aviation and travel correspondent for the flight-tracker app Flighty.

Passengers are entitled to a cash refund under Department of Transportation rules if a flight was canceled, if it departed or arrived from a different airport, or if it was delayed more than three hours for domestic flights or six hours for international flights.

Genna Contino and Rob Schroeder contributed.

-Claudia Assis

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11-13-26 1744ET