On November 13, 2026, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced an unprecedented nationwide temporary halt of all domestic air traffic, ordering every commercial and private flight operating within U.S. airspace to remain grounded until further notice, citing unconfirmed “extraordinary circumstances” and public safety imperatives. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy clarified that the sweeping ground stop was triggered by a systemic communications disruption that impacted every one of the country’s regional Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the specialized facilities responsible for coordinating cross-country high-altitude flight paths across the national airspace network. The FAA’s official operational advisory confirmed that no domestic aircraft will be permitted to depart from any U.S. airport until regulators complete a full safety assessment, while incoming international flights bound for U.S. destinations will be evaluated individually on a case-by-case basis to determine appropriate routing or diversion protocols. As of the latest public update, FAA technical teams have launched an urgent full investigation to identify the root cause of the widespread communication failure, though no timeline for resolving the issue or resuming normal flight operations has been released to the public. Historical data confirms this is only the third full nationwide flight ground stop enforced in modern U.S. aviation history: the previous two instances occurred in January 2023 after a critical pilot notification system outage, and in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
FAA Grounds All Flights in the U.S. Over “Extraordinary Circumstances” and Safety
