It never rains but it pours. Now, on Friday the 13th, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a nationwide ground stop on all commercial air travel over the United States. Planes on the ground will stay there. Planes in the air will stop at their next destination. The cause is reportedly an air-traffic radio failure.
This is liable to tangle up commercial air travel for quite a while, all across the United States.
BREAKING: A nationwide ground stop has been issued across the U.S. for an unknown reason, with no estimated duration announced. https://t.co/Q4dNmty84Y
— Scope Report (@ScopeReport_) November 13, 2026
Reporting from an FAA source cited by The Washington Examiner said that a ground stop of this size is "absolutely unheard of."
🚨 BREAKING NEWS: FAA has issued a ground stop and halted all flight departures nationwide due to “rolling frequency outage.”
— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) November 13, 2026
FAA source who provided documentation below says “absolutely unheard of.” pic.twitter.com/s4XMaBQ5eA
The radio failure appears to involve Boston, New York, and Chicago, all major airline hubs. The ground stop, for now, covers all contiguous 48 states. The effects on air travel from the East Coast to the West Coast will be considerable.
An FAA radio outage is grounding flights at Chicago's two big airports on Friday afternoon, and air traffic controllers in New York and Boston are reportedly dealing with the same problem. As of 3:39 p.m. Eastern, the FAA had ground stops at Chicago O'Hare and Chicago Midway because of an "equipment outage," with flights headed there held at their departure airports until at least 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Departures from Teterboro in New Jersey were also delayed by up to 45 minutes because of an FAA equipment problem.
The trouble reportedly started around 3:15 p.m. Eastern, when controllers began losing radio frequencies, the channels they use to talk to pilots.
That report indicates only Chicago, New York and Boston involved. But Secretary of Transportation (DOT) Sean Duffy has announced, on his official X account, that the ground stop is nationwide.
The @FAAnews 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. We will provide immediate updates as we have them.
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) November 13, 2026
As though airline travel wasn't stressful enough already.
The way ground stops generally work is this: Airliners on the ground stay on the ground until the ground stop is lifted, which may be a matter of minutes, or it may be a matter of hours. Flights already airborne proceed to their destination and stay there until the ground stop is lifted. The usual reason for these is weather, which makes this one, due to a communications failure, something of an eyebrow-raiser. Even local ground stops can snarl up the complicated patterns of airline travel; a nationwide ground stop may have things messed up for some time.
As of this writing, there has been no official press release or statement from the FAA as to when the stop may be lifted.
That's what we know for now. Stay tuned. As always, we will continue to monitor the situation and update you as events warrant.
Editor's Note: This article was edited for clarity post-publication.
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