US ground stop lifted after several hours, thousands of delayed flights

The video above is a live stream of WBTV and affiliated programming, and may not be directly related to the article below.

(WBTV) - The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday night, allowing flights to resume after hours of telecommunication issues.

The FAA issued a ground stop for all U.S. airports at around 4:11 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 13 due to a “temporary telecommunications outage.” The outage impacted regional air traffic control centers, and the ground stop was issued as a safety precaution, officials said.

By 8:15 p.m. Friday, the FAA had lifted the ground stop and “reopened the airspace,” federal officials announced during a press conference.

Amid the nationwide outage, thousands of flights were delayed while nearly all departing flights were required to stay grounded for hours.

When asked what caused the outage, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it was a failure of “legacy” equipment, while calling on Congress to help replace the old technology.

“We have old switches, old routers. We use 1980s little copper lines. It’s an old system that went down. It went down everywhere. It got overloaded,” Duffy said.

During the ground stop, federal officials said some flights were cleared to take off, including in Hawaii and Alaska airspaces, as well as some departing international flights.

Inbound flights were allowed to land, and the FAA was considering incoming international flights on a case-by-case basis.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday night that the technology disruption was not connected with a widespread Microsoft Outlook outage that affected people and businesses worldwide the day prior.

Federal officials said the public was never in danger, and all flights were accounted for.

“We have seen zero evidence that this was a cyberattack, or a SI attack,” Secretary Mullin said.

Still, investigators were looking into the telecommunications outage to ensure that no “nefarious activity” was involved.

Travel starting back up, but

General air travel was allowed to resume Friday night, officials said, but it was expected to take “some time” to get back to capacity.

Tens of thousands of travelers were stranded on Friday due to the ground stop. Transportation Secretary Duffy said larger planes moving a significant number of people would be given a higher priority over smaller planes with fewer passengers.

Officials said they expect air travel to get “back up and operational” as Thanksgiving travel picks up, saying some “catch up” was expected. A specific deadline for operations to be back to normal was not provided on Friday.

Secretaries Mullin and Duffy repeatedly called on Congress Friday night to help fund a better infrastructure for air travel to prevent future outages.

Nationally, flight-tracking website FlightAware reported more than 10,000 flight delays “within, into, or out of the United States” on Friday.

Travelers were encouraged to check their flight statuses with their airlines directly.

Government officials encouraged professional sports teams to reach out to the FAA to schedule flights to maintain their scheduled game times this weekend.

---> Related: Sudden FAA ground stop strands teams and throws upcoming sports weekend into chaos

Nationwide ground stops are not common

There have been only two nationwide ground stops issued since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The most recent was in January 2023, when a malfunctioning FAA computer system prompted a nationwide ground stop.

Prior to that, a nationwide ground stop was issued after the 9/11 attacks.

Friday’s ground stop came just hours after a major Microsoft Office outage impacted people and businesses around the globe. That outage was largely restored by Friday morning.

Federal officials made clear that there was not a connection between the Microsoft outage and the FAA outage this week.

---> Read more: Microsoft explains what caused global outage, Outlook to go down for millions of users

---> Related news: ‘Not true’: National Weather Service says tech issues regional, not widespread