Ground stop lifted hours after stranding thousands of flights across the U.S.
NBC News reports that the FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop on departing flights at 3:54 p.m. ET on 13 November 2026, citing safety, and lifted it at 8:15 p.m. after more than 5,000 flights were canceled and airports filled with stranded passengers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the outage to overloaded routers in the decades-old air traffic control system, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no sign of a cyberattack and the public was never in danger.
