The United States lifted its nationwide ground stop on Friday night, hours after a failure in air traffic control radar and radio links halted departures. More than 4,700 flights were cancelled and over 10,000 delayed. Air India has warned US-bound passengers to check flight status before leaving for the airport.
Updated: 14 November 2026, 10:10 IST
Quick Read
- The FAA, America’s aviation regulator, ordered a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 PM ET on Friday 13 November, after a communications failure hit all 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centres. The stop was lifted at 8:15 PM ET the same evening.
- More than 4,700 flights were cancelled and over 10,000 delayed on Friday, FlightRadar24 said. About 1.5 million travellers were hit, Cirium said. Over 700 Saturday flights were already cancelled.
- Air India advised passengers on 14 November to check flight status before going to the airport. The advisory went out while the stop was still in effect. The stop has since been lifted, but delays continue into Saturday.
What happened on Friday
At 3:36 PM Eastern Time on Friday, air traffic control centres across the country began losing radar data and radio contact with planes. At 3:54 PM, the FAA ordered every airport to halt departures, citing “extraordinary circumstances”.
Planes already in the air kept flying; only take-offs stopped. More than 3,500 aircraft were in the air when the order came, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. Incoming flights were looked at one by one, and some were allowed to land.
The stop lasted about four and a half hours. At 8:15 PM Eastern Time, the FAA lifted it and flights began to move again. But Duffy warned that getting back to normal would be slow, because airlines first need pilots and cabin crew in the right places. JetBlue cancelled the rest of its domestic flights for Friday, and Air Canada cancelled all its US flights for the evening. At least 827 flights were diverted, Cirium said — 670 sent back to the airport they had left from, and 157 sent elsewhere.
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Why the system failed
The cause was old equipment, not an attack. Routers — the boxes that move data between computer systems — were overloaded with data, so controllers got radar and radio data that did not match up. The system shut itself down as a safety step, Duffy said. The problem is believed to have started at Chicago Midway airport before it spread.
There is no sign of a cyber attack, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said. Microsoft also denied any link to its own global outage a day earlier.
The Trump administration is now seeking $50 billion to fix America’s ageing air traffic systems, the Times of India reported. The last nationwide ground stop was in January 2023, when a computer system failed. Before that, the only other one was on 11 September 2001. It was only the third nationwide ground stop in US history.
The scale of the mess
FlightRadar24 counted more than 4,700 cancellations and over 10,000 delays on Friday. FlightAware, another tracker, counted more than 6,600 cancellations. The two trackers count in different ways, so their totals differ — but both agree the disruption ran into the thousands.
Around 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers had been due to leave US airports after 4 PM Eastern Time on Friday. More than 700 Saturday flights were already cancelled, FlightRadar24 said, and Reuters reported it may take several days for airlines to get back to normal.
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What Air India said
Air India put out an advisory on X on 14 November. It said a nationwide ground stop was “currently in effect” and warned of “possible consequential disruptions” to its US flights.
Read that advisory with care. It went out while the stop was still in effect, so the ground stop itself is now over — but the knock-on delays are real and will run into Saturday and beyond.
If you are flying to the US
First, check your flight status on the Air India website or app before you leave home.
Second, keep your booking reference handy and the airline’s app alerts switched on. Rebooked times can change more than once.
Third, expect a slow recovery — Duffy said so himself. If your trip is not urgent, ask about moving it by a day or two.
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FAQ
Is the ground stop still in effect?
No. The FAA lifted it at 8:15 PM Eastern Time on Friday 13 November, about four and a half hours after it was ordered. Delays continue into Saturday.
Was it a cyber attack?
There is no sign of one, Mullin said. The cause was overloaded routers giving controllers radar and radio data that did not match.
Will my Air India flight be hit?
Possibly. Air India warned of knock-on disruption to its US flights. Check your flight status on the Air India website or app before you go to the airport.
Desk-original added context
Our own timeline: 3:36 PM ET Friday — radar and radio trouble detected; 3:54 PM ET — nationwide ground stop ordered; 8:15 PM ET — stop lifted; Saturday — more than 700 flights already cancelled. Our own maths: the stop lasted 4 hours and 21 minutes, and about 14,700 flights were hit on Friday (4,700 cancelled plus 10,000 delayed) — close to the “nearly 15,000” reported by Times Now. One gap worth stating: the trackers do not agree on cancellations. FlightRadar24 says more than 4,700; FlightAware says more than 6,600. Treat any single total as an estimate. The one number every source agrees on is the human scale: about 1.5 million travellers were affected.
Sources
- Financial Express — Relief for 1.5m flyers as US cancels nationwide ground stop; all we know about the FAA issue (14 Nov 2026, 200 verified; primary source)
- The Times of India — US flight disruptions: Ground stop lifted, but will your flight take off? Trump official explains (14 Nov 2026, 200 verified; 8:15 PM ET lift time, Duffy quote)
- Times Now — FAA lifts nationwide ground stop after 15,000 flights hit by massive outage (14 Nov 2026, 200 verified; 15,000 flights hit, 827 diverted)
Sasanka Sekhar Pradhan is the founder of India Presents, an India-focused news site. He covers daily box-office trackers, India news, economy explainers, sports previews and festival guides — in simple English, so readers across India can follow fast-moving stories without jargon. His focus is what a story means for the reader: the number that matters, the source behind it, and what happens next. India Presents publishes daily, with day-trackers updated as new figures come in.
