On Friday, November 14, 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initiated a nationwide ground stop at 3:36 p.m. ET, affecting thousands of travelers across the United States. At the moment the order was issued, approximately 3,500 flights were actively in the air. While the vast majority of commercial aviation was halted, the FAA permitted medical services flights to proceed to their intended destinations.
President Trump was notified of the situation within 30 minutes of the ground stop, according to U.S. officials. In the minutes following the announcement, a wide-ranging interagency response was activated. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, the Transportation Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Cyber Command, the FAA, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency began coordinating through a shared communication loop. The intelligence community conducted a search for potential nefarious activity or suspicious chatter, but ultimately ruled out such threats.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued a statement at 4:16 p.m. ET, attributing the ground stop to a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. As FAA technicians investigated the failure, the White House convened an interagency call to establish a response plan, led by White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. Senior staff briefed President Trump, who was attending an economic policy meeting at the time. The President later held meetings with Secretary Duffy and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
During the crisis, President Trump initiated calls to congressional leaders to advocate for increased FAA funding. Simultaneously, the White House congressional team contacted key members of Congress to discuss the modernization of air traffic controller systems. The Homeland Security Council, an interagency body established by President George W. Bush in 2001, has invited government members and outside stakeholders to a meeting on Monday to discuss preventative measures and future infrastructure modernization.
The ground stop lasted four hours before the system issue was identified and operations resumed. According to FlightAware, the disruption resulted in 9,159 flight cancellations and 7,190 delays on Friday. Secretaries Mullin and Duffy were more than 30 minutes late for a scheduled 7:45 p.m. ET press conference because they were focused on lifting the ground stop and did not want to interrupt the recovery process.
In a Saturday press conference, Secretary Duffy explained that the failure originated during maintenance by FAA telecommunications contractor L3Harris Technologies. While replacing aging copper communication lines with fiber optic connections at a remote facility, a router began generating over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, overwhelming the FAA network. While federal officials have identified this sequence of events, they noted that key questions remain regarding the underlying cause of the systemwide failure.
The intelligence community soon preliminarily ruled out the likelihood of nefarious activity after searching through its various channels for chatter or pings. Nothing came up.
