All flights at US airports grounded 'due to extraordinary circumstances'

Comment by Dan Millican...

UPDATE: Why the US Airspace Was Shutdown - Taking Off​

On Friday, November 13, 2026, the FAA stopped every departure from every airport in the United States for about 4 hours and 23 minutes. It was only the second nationwide ground stop since 9/11, and the longest.

What actually failed, why did the whole country stop, and what does it mean if you're flying this weekend?

At 2:53 PM CT (3:53 PM ET), the FAA Command Center issued a national ground stop "due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said more than 3,500 airplanes were in the air at the time. The stop was cancelled effective 7:16 PM CT (8:16 PM ET).

At a White House briefing that evening, Duffy said the FAA's older TDM "analog" telecom switches and routers became overloaded and began passing inconsistent radar and communications data. He said facilities already upgraded to digital/IP equipment did not have the problem.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials have seen zero evidence of a cyberattack, that the cause appears mechanically driven while nothing has been ruled out, and that there is no connection to this week's Microsoft outage.

We walk through the FAA's own advisories, explain TRACONs, Centers and TDM, and cover the replacement program and the funding request in front of Congress. That's the administration's formal $30.1 billion ask, and Duffy says he wants $50 billion.

We also cover what travelers should expect next.
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RedViking said:
Good reason to get the 50 billion approved then and they need to do it quickly.
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Nah - construction of the new 'Bigly Yuge' gilded ballroom at the White House is apparently a higher priority than keeping US airspace safely up & running 24/7/365 with updated technology... 🇺🇸🤡:p🏛️

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Flanders said:
Clippy becomes self-aweh-ya at two fwateen am, eastern time, November thirteenth, twendy twendy six.


View attachment 1954012
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Fixed.

Who the hell loaded Clippy onto the system?!?!?


At this stage, it appears that the implementation of new equipment and technology into a decades-old air traffic control system caused it to become overloaded.
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The BBC says the issue was caused by old copper wiring upgrade, and an old proprietary system:
www.bbc.com

Copper wire upgrade work caused nationwide flight suspension, US transport secretary says - follow live

Sean Duffy has previously warned the ripple effect caused by Friday night's four-hour ground stop could last for days.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
Duffy speaks about what happened ahead of the mass grounding yesterday, reiterating that the US has "an incredibly old telecommunications system".

He explains that maintenance was being carried out to switch from copper wire to fibre by a contractor called L3Harris - a technology provider company.

"It was such an old wire that it was being discontinued," he says, adding this work has been going on over many years.

Duffy goes on to say that the government is trying to find out whether the problem was caused by "incompetence" on the part of L3Harris, or by a faulty piece of equipment.

The router that was being worked on started flooding other air traffic control systems, he says, which created communication issues with planes that led the government to shut down the airspace for safety reasons.
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I suppose these kind of things can happen. But the ripple-effect is insane i mean a lot of lost money and travel and backlogs now.

Other than that i think that system pretty stable though? And it seems upgrades are in progress but you certainly would never big-bang-approach something like that the rollouts should be done over a considerable time period.
 
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