If you’re at a gate right now watching every flight on the board flip to “DELAYED,” you’re far from the only one.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials have not yet discussed a time frame for resolving the FAA communications outage as the administration focuses on passenger safety.
“We have not discussed any timeframe,” he told reporters at the White House.
“It’s going to take some time,” he went on. “And so this isn’t going to just be resolved and turned around within the hour.”
On Friday afternoon, Nov. 13, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop, which halted departing flights at airports across the country. The FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center issued the order as Advisory 111, and it took effect at 3:53 p.m. Eastern. The wording was blunt. Every airport was ground stopped, and all departing traffic was to stay put “until further notice,” because of “extraordinary circumstances” and “for reasons of safety.”
What caused the ground stop?
The FAA hasn’t officially said. Early signs point to a communications breakdown. Washington Examiner reporter Anna Giaritelli posted notices that described “widespread frequency outages,” meaning trouble with the radio channels pilots and air traffic controllers use to talk to each other. Pilot and dispatch chatter told the same story: Delta dispatch warned one crew of “multiple frequency outages across the country.” An FAA source who spoke to Giaritelli called the situation “absolutely unheard of.”
The trouble seems to have started in Chicago. About 45 minutes before the national order, the FAA stopped flights headed to O’Hare, citing an equipment outage and communications issues. Midway got a matching stop minutes later.
Before your mind goes there: nothing reported so far points to an attack. The early signs all point to an equipment and radio problem. The advisories that came before the national order cited an “equipment outage” and “comms issues” in Chicago.
What does a ground stop actually mean?
A ground stop is a precaution. It keeps planes on the ground while controllers can’t reliably talk to pilots, and it doesn’t mean anything has happened to a plane. It doesn’t affect flights already in the air, so those continue to their destinations. The FAA says it’s handling inbound international flights case by case.
When will flights resume?
That’s not clear yet. Some advisories gave end times of 4:30 or 5 p.m. Eastern, while the command center’s order said “until further notice.” Even after the stop lifts, delays will likely ripple through the evening as airlines untangle crews and aircraft that are out of position.
Has this happened before?
Yes, but rarely. In January 2023, the failure of the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system triggered a nationwide stop on domestic departures. That was widely reported as the first halt of its kind since the September 2001 attacks.