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Nationwide ground stop: all U.S. departures held, 13 November 2026

Live updates Posted 13 Nov 2026, 2141Z · Updated 13 Nov 2026, 2231Z

Status as of 2231Z (5:31 pm Eastern): the nationwide ground stop is still in effect for domestic departures. We have seen no cancellation and officials have given no end time. Restrictions now exist for international and oceanic departures from the New York area, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area, which points to those flights being released with spacing. Officials describe the cause as a telecommunications outage with no indication yet of an attack.

This post is updated as new information arrives. All times are UTC (Zulu) on 13 November 2026 unless marked otherwise. Eastern time is Zulu minus five hours.

Latest

• 2225Z: most of the Chicago route stops cancelled. Six of the seven O'Hare route stops issued at 2209Z (listed below as running to 0100Z) were cancelled 16 minutes later. The stop on O'Hare arrivals from Kansas City Center remains. We do not know whether that reflects Chicago recovering or the restrictions being reorganised.
• 2215Z: Montreal stopped. A ground stop for Montreal-Trudeau (CYUL) runs from 2215Z to 2330Z. Toronto's runs to 2315Z.
• About 2218Z: "just a telecommunications outage as of now". The Homeland Security Secretary, speaking at the White House, said: "It's just a telecommunications outage as of now", and that there is no indication yet that "this was a nefarious attack against us" (AP). Officials "are not ruling out anything at this point", and he gave no timeline for restoring service. Nobody has named the network, carrier or system that failed.
• 2200Z: more than 9,000 delays. FlightAware figures reported by Yahoo News: over 9,000 delays and over 440 cancellations for flights within, into or out of the United States.
• Canada: Nav Canada says "Our systems are operating normally and there is currently no impact to our operations." Toronto Pearson's operator says there are "no scheduled U.S.-bound departures or arrivals at this time", and Montreal-Trudeau is reported to be suspending U.S. flights (BNN Bloomberg).
• 2209Z: Chicago routes stopped until 0100Z. New stops cover O'Hare arrivals from Minneapolis, Cleveland and Kansas City Centers (over MYRRS, ZZIPR, SHIKY, WYNDE, CASHN and KEOKK), and O'Hare departures through Cleveland and Indianapolis Centers over WATSN, FWA and BONNT, all until 0100Z. The reason is given as "OCL". Kennedy's departure delay now carries the same code ("EQ: OCL: equipment"). We read OCL as "operational contingency level", the FAA's term for a facility working at reduced capability, but the restrictions do not spell it out or name the facility. Either way, restrictions written to 0100Z (8 pm Eastern) suggest Chicago's problem is not expected to clear quickly.
• 2220Z: Toronto stop extended. Nav Canada's ground stop for Toronto Pearson (CYYZ), first issued at 2208Z, now runs to 2315Z with a high probability of extension. The revised version lists every U.S. center as the departure scope. The cause is given only as "other".
• 2206Z to 2227Z: international and oceanic departures are being spaced, not stopped. Restrictions marked "international departures only" now cover Kennedy, White Plains, Newark, Teterboro and Philadelphia (over the MERIT, BETTE, HAPIE, DITCH and GREKI fixes) from about 2215Z to 0100Z, citing equipment. At 2227Z Oakland Center added three minutes between departures from San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose for "all aircraft westbound over ocean to Asia/Hawaii", from 2230Z to 0400Z. A spacing restriction only matters for flights that are moving, so flights leaving U.S. domestic airspace appear to be getting out. That is our inference: no advisory says so, and the national stop has not been amended.
• 2231Z: still draining. Flights in the arrival metering system: 1,000 at 2231Z, against about 3,250 at this time yesterday, and still falling.
• 2147Z: Anchorage Center put spacing on seven oceanic and Alaska routes until 0500Z for "compacted demand".

What we know

• At 2054Z (3:54 pm Eastern) the Air Traffic Control System Command Center issued advisory 111, "National Ground Stop":

DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY. ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED. ALL DEPARTING TRAFFIC SHOULD REMAIN GROUND STOPPED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. INBOUND INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS WILL BE MANAGED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.

• The advisory's event window runs from 2053Z to 0400Z (11 pm Eastern). That is the window the advisory is filed for, not a forecast: the text says "until further notice". The 2102Z operations plan (advisory 112) repeats the stop.
• Official cause so far: a communication problem at en-route centers. The Transportation Secretary posted at 4:16 pm Eastern, as quoted by WDBO: "The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. FAA technicians are investigating the issue." An FAA statement carried by CNBC says "multiple" centers rather than all.
• That matches the data. Every restriction issued in the hour before the stop cites equipment, communications or radio frequencies, not weather. Chicago O'Hare's ground stop (advisory 107) gives "EQUIPMENT / OUTAGE" with the comment "COMMS ISSUES". Stops through Boston approach, Potomac approach and Washington Center give "frequency" or "freq issues".
• It started regionally and spread: Chicago first (2010Z), then Boston and the Washington area (2024Z to 2041Z), then the whole country (2054Z).
• Flights already airborne are continuing, with holding. Advisory 116 (2120Z) says: "Users can expect airborne holding to any and all airports within the NAS due equipment outages", for 2100Z to 0300Z. Washington National arrivals were stopped at 2114Z for "gridlock", with the note "expect holding and diverts". The Command Center has opened its diversion recovery process for all airports until 0500Z.
• The Command Center's own words for it: "nationwide comms failure". Advisory 117 (2121Z) extends how long filed flight plans are kept to 240 minutes at every en-route center "due to nationwide comms failure", through 0500Z. Chicago and Los Angeles Centers had already gone to 180 minutes on their own, citing an "equipment outage" and "equipment issues".

What we do not know

• The root cause. Officials say a telecommunications outage and that technicians are investigating. Nothing official says which network or system failed, or why.
• How long it will last. "Until further notice" is the only official guidance.
• Whether it has started to ease anywhere. Some social media accounts claimed the stop had been lifted. We have seen no cancellation advisory and nothing official that supports that.

Reported but not confirmed

Treat these as unverified. None comes from a named official source.

• The Washington Examiner describes a "rolling frequency outage", citing two unnamed FAA employees and documents it viewed. That is consistent with the "frequency" reasons in the restrictions above, but it is not an official finding.
• American Airlines is reported to have said the FAA "is working to resolve a technical issue affecting telecommunications at many air traffic control facilities".
• One site says the problem began at Kansas City Center around 3:30 pm Eastern. It gives no source, and the first restrictions we received that cite equipment were for Chicago.
• An internal Alaska Airlines message cited by CNBC describes "communications and radar issues". Nothing we have received mentions radar at a national level.
• Cyberattack: on the record, the Homeland Security Secretary says there is no indication yet of an attack and that nothing is ruled out (see Latest). CNN's live coverage is separately reported to cite two law enforcement officials saying preliminary reports point away from one; we could not open that page to check the wording.
• The AP reports that agencies are examining whether a new FAA traffic management tool is connected. That is a line of inquiry, not a finding.
• A pilot quoted by Yahoo News repeats the claim that it started at Kansas City Center. Still unsourced.

Timeline

The scale so far

• FlightAware figures for flights within, into or out of the United States: over 9,000 delays and over 440 cancellations as of 2200Z (Yahoo News), up from 7,884 and 340 at about 2145Z (News9).
• United Airlines, as quoted by NBC Chicago: "flights that are already airborne will continue" and "New domestic flights will not depart while the FAA ground stop remains in place."

What the data shows

Traffic is draining out of the system. The arrival metering system schedules flights that are airborne or about to depart toward the busiest airports. The number it is tracking has fallen by two thirds in under two hours, at a time of day when it is normally flat:

That is what a departure stop looks like from the arrival side: flights keep landing and nothing replaces them. The count is still falling by 15 to 20 flights a minute as of 2231Z. When departures resume it should level off and climb; it has not.

Departure delays on the public status page. The page has been inconsistent. It listed nine airports with departure delays at 2152Z (O'Hare, Teterboro and Newark among them, at 76 to 105 minutes, mostly citing FAA equipment), two at 2206Z, four at 2213Z (Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Kennedy and Miami, at 76 to 105 minutes) none at 2217Z, one at 2221Z, and four at 2230Z: Teterboro (121 to 135 minutes), Newark and Houston Intercontinental (106 to 120 minutes) and Kennedy (90 to 104 minutes, decreasing). We do not read a short or empty list as recovery: the metering count is still falling and no advisory has changed the stop. Only a handful of airports ever report figures this way.

The national stop is not listed airport by airport. The public status page has no individual ground stop entries right now. The nationwide stop exists as advisory 111 and the statement in the operations plan. Route checks on this site now show it for every route. The map and airport pages still show only each airport's own restrictions, so an airport can look normal there when it is not. Until the stop is lifted, treat every IFR departure as held.

Our own feeds blinked. Both data feeds this site receives went silent together for about three minutes at roughly 2041Z, then resumed. We do not know whether that is related.

NOTAMs

We have not found a NOTAM covering the stop. The public NOTAM search refused our requests, so that is not a confirmed absence. The list of temporary flight restrictions shows only routine entries. We will add anything we find.

Also in effect today, for unrelated reasons

Ground delay programs for San Francisco (wind), LaGuardia (wind), Las Vegas (wind), Boston and San Diego (volume) were already running before any of this, along with thunderstorm route closures over the western Atlantic and a Starship launch window from 2245Z. Expect those to compound the recovery once departures resume.

If you are about to fly IFR

• Expect not to be released. Check with clearance delivery or Flight Service before you start an engine.
• If you filed, your flight plan is being kept longer than usual: 240 minutes at every en-route center, until 0500Z. Past that it may time out and need refiling.
• When the stop lifts, releases will not be immediate. Hours of held departures will be metered out, and airports with delay programs will assign departure times.

Sources

• Command Center advisories 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116 and 117 of 13 November 2026, as received by IFR Meter. The public advisories database was returning no advisories when we checked at 2140Z.
• The public airport status page.
• Statements and figures as quoted by AP, Yahoo News, BNN Bloomberg, News9, NBC Chicago, WDBO and CNBC.
• Traffic management restrictions and arrival metering data as received and processed by IFR Meter. Counts and interpretation here are our own and are not official figures.

IFR Meter is not an FAA service. This is advisory information; confirm everything with ATC.