The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide suspension of all flights on Friday, 13 November, following a major telecommunications outage affecting air traffic control centres across the country, disrupting thousands of journeys and leaving passengers uncertain about when services would resume.
The FAA said the decision was taken “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”. In a subsequent statement on X, the agency described the problem as “a temporary telecommunications outage”, adding that it had imposed the restrictions “out of an abundance of caution”. FAA technicians were investigating the failure, which affected all Air Route Traffic Control Centres responsible for directing aircraft between airports.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that the communications problem had affected regional air traffic control centres nationwide. He said technicians were working to establish the cause of the disruption.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no immediate indication that the outage resulted from an attack against the United States. “This isn’t another 9/11,” he said, adding that officials had found no evidence, at that stage, of a deliberate hostile operation.
“There was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious attack against us, it’s just a telecommunication outage, as of right now,” Mullin said. However, he added that authorities were “not ruling out anything at this point”.
The nationwide suspension is an exceptionally rare measure in US aviation. The last comparable shutdown occurred in January 2023, when a malfunction in the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system disrupted the distribution of essential information to pilots about potential hazards and other conditions affecting flights. That incident lasted just under two hours and was considered the first nationwide grounding since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Although the FAA has previously imposed restrictions on individual airlines following communications problems, such measures have generally lasted only a few hours. A nationwide order affecting all US airports is considerably less common.
Friday’s disruption left passengers facing confusion at airports, with some departure boards continuing to display flights as operating normally even as travellers were prevented from boarding. Some passengers were reportedly removed from aircraft shortly before departure after airline personnel received instructions to halt operations.
At Las Vegas airport, Southwest Airlines check-in staff told passengers that flights might not depart for the remainder of the night. Some airline employees said they had been informed that the suspension could last at least eight hours, while one staff member suggested it might continue for 24 hours. These estimates were not confirmed by the FAA.
Passengers also reported receiving inconsistent explanations for delays. Some were told that adverse wind conditions had affected their flights, while others struggled to obtain reliable information about the nationwide suspension.
Joseph Anderson, 72, who was attempting to travel from Las Vegas to Oakland, California, said passengers were receiving little information about the situation.
“So supposedly, nobody’s flying, but they haven’t told the public yet,” he said. Anderson, a retired Air Force veteran, said he and other travellers were considering whether to reschedule their journeys or drive instead. He also expressed concern that road traffic could become congested if air travel remained suspended.
“We can’t get our luggage, so we kind of stuck,” he said, adding that he hoped the FAA would improve its communication with passengers.
The shutdown came a day after Duffy formally requested $30.1 billion from Congress to upgrade and modernise the US air traffic control system. In a letter to lawmakers, Duffy and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought described the proposed investment as essential to modernising the country’s national airspace.
“This investment is critical to complete the modernization of our national airspace — delivering a resilient telecommunications backbone for air traffic controllers, modern hardware and software, state-of-the-art control towers, and world-class airport infrastructure,” they wrote.
