The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all departing flights nationwide on Friday, November 13, after a communications failure hit its air traffic control centers. The order was lifted about five hours later.

The ground stop was issued at around 3:54 p.m. Eastern Time following a communication issue affecting all 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Airspace reopened at about 8:15 p.m. ET.

At an evening news conference, officials blamed aging FAA telecommunications equipment that became overloaded with data, with Duffy pointing to routers swamped by traffic. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no evidence so far of a cyberattack and that the incident was unrelated to the Microsoft 365 outage that began a day earlier.

Duffy also ruled out any role for SMART, the FAA’s new AI-assisted route-planning tool, saying it is not connected to the core systems controllers use to track aircraft. The FAA had expanded SMART to all 22 centers just three days earlier, and its developer, Air Space Intelligence, said its software did not cause the stoppage.

FlightAware counted nearly 7,000 delayed or canceled flights by Friday afternoon. Duffy asked Congress for $50 billion in emergency funding to modernize the air traffic control system.

Why it matters

The outage shows that the private network linking air traffic facilities is aviation’s real backbone: when it fails, an entire country’s airspace can stop, no matter how advanced the AI tools layered on top. Aviation and telecom regulators everywhere, including in fast-growing Gulf and Middle East hubs, can take a clear lesson about investing in independent backup links and retiring legacy equipment. Travelers heading to the US should expect knock-on schedule disruption for some days.

Source: CBS News

By the TechMojaz team