The Federal Aviation Administration stopped all departures nationwide on Friday, Nov. 13, citing communication failures at its en-route traffic control centers. Is the FAA ground stop confirmed? Yes, by the FAA’s own advisory and by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. But a good deal of what is spreading about the cause, the scope and the end of the stop is not. This page separates the official record from reporting, from rumor, and from 2023 stories that are being reshared.
Where it stands: At 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Nov. 13, News Accurate could find no announcement from the FAA, the Transportation Department or Duffy that the order had ended. In the FAA’s public airport feed, checked at roughly 4:50 p.m. Eastern, delays for departures in Atlanta and Miami were still coded to the national stop.
How we sorted the claims
We treated three things as official: the text of the FAA command center’s advisory, statements issued by the FAA itself, and Duffy’s post as the cabinet secretary over the FAA. The FAA’s machine-readable airport feed counts as official data. Everything else, including anonymous FAA employees, pilots, airlines, flight trackers and news outlets summarizing one another, is reporting. Where two official descriptions disagree, we say so rather than picking one.
FAA ground stop confirmed facts vs. reports
| Claim | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| National ground stop ordered at 3:54 p.m. ET | Confirmed | Advisory 111 text; Duffy on X |
| Departures held “until further notice” | Confirmed | Advisory 111 text |
| Communication problem at en-route centers | Confirmed | FAA statement; Duffy |
| “All” centers affected | Conflicting | Duffy says all; FAA says multiple |
| Failure started at Kansas City center | Reported only | Local coverage, pilot relay |
| “Rolling frequency outage” | Reported only | Two unnamed FAA employees |
| Cyberattack | No official word | Officials silent on cause |
| Stop already lifted | Not confirmed as of 5 p.m. ET | No official statement |
| Ends at 11 p.m. ET | Estimate, not a promise | Advisory planning window |
| “FAA lifts ground stop” headlines | From 2023 | January 2023 NOTAM outage |
What the official record says
The order itself is not in doubt. Clash Report, which timestamped each step, dates Advisory 111, headed “National Ground Stop,” to 3:54 p.m. Eastern; it came from the agency’s national traffic command center. Its text, reproduced by several outlets, reads in full: “Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety. Attention all aircraft operators, by order of the Federal Aviation Command Center all airports are ground stopped. All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice. Inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis.”
Duffy then confirmed it on X at 4:16 p.m., writing that the FAA “issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”
The FAA’s own description is narrower. Newsweek quoted the agency’s statement as citing “communication issues impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” and noted that the FAA called the information preliminary and subject to change. “Multiple” and “all” are not the same claim. Until the FAA reconciles them, the accurate description is that at least several of the 22 centers were hit, with the secretary saying every one was.
What is reported but not confirmed
The Kansas City origin. MLQ.ai summarized local Oklahoma coverage that tied the radio trouble partly to the Kansas City center, while observing that the advisory’s own text says nothing about communications. A pilot quoted by other outlets made a similar claim secondhand. The FAA has not said where the failure began.
A “rolling frequency outage.” According to MLQ.ai, the Washington Examiner cited two FAA employees who used that phrase and said it had seen documentation of the halt. Anonymous sourcing can be right, but the agency has not adopted the description.
The airline’s version. American Airlines told customers at 4:24 p.m. that the FAA was fixing “a technical issue affecting telecommunications at many air traffic control facilities across the country.” That is an airline’s paraphrase to its passengers, not an FAA finding.
What is unconfirmed or unsupported
That a cyberattack caused it. No official has said so, and none has ruled it out. SecurityWeek put it this way: “Federal officials have yet to publicly identify what triggered the problem, and it is unclear if the incident is linked to a cyberattack.” Clash Report wrote: “Officials have not said whether a cyberattack is suspected.” Posts that state a cause, cyber or otherwise, are going beyond the record.
That the stop was lifted around 4:30 p.m. This rumor has an identifiable source of confusion. Clash Report noted that the FAA’s public status board was not showing the national order at 4:30 p.m., and that the earlier Chicago stops had dropped off, adding: “Some accounts claimed the national stop had been lifted, but there was no official confirmation.” The board appears never to have carried the national order as a ground-stop entry. In the FAA airport events feed as we pulled it shortly before 4:50 p.m. Eastern, the ground-stop field was empty for every listed airport, yet Atlanta departures were coded “OTHER: NATIONAL STOP” and Miami’s “NAS GS.” An empty ground-stop list is therefore not proof of a lift.
That LAX and Las Vegas are “closed.” KTVU reported that, at 1:15 Friday afternoon, the FAA’s status page showed Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago and San Diego under ground stops. Anyone checking the map now should know that the LAX and Las Vegas entries in the feed’s closure list are standing notices that close those airports to non-scheduled transient general aviation aircraft, dating to May and October. They are not the national stop and do not mean the airports are shut to airlines.
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That flights resume at 11 p.m. ET. USA Today reported that the advisory’s effective period ends at 11:30 p.m. ET, and stressed that “The listed expiration time does not guarantee that flights will resume by then.” Treat any stated end time as the FAA’s planning estimate.
Old 2023 stories in today’s feeds
Searches for “FAA lifts ground stop” are surfacing stories from the last nationwide stop, which happened in January 2023 after the FAA’s pilot notice system, NOTAM, failed overnight. NPR’s live coverage from that morning, posted January 11, 2023 at 9:02 AM EST, quotes the FAA saying normal operations were “resuming gradually” after “an overnight outage to the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system.” Explanations of a contractor deleting files also belong to 2023. None of that describes Nov. 13. Our explainer on the 2023 NOTAM outage covers what happened then.
A quick test for any post: if it names Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary, mentions NOTAM, or is dated Wednesday, it is about 2023. The Nov. 13 stop fell on a Friday, and Duffy is the secretary.
What would change this page
Three things would move items in the table: an FAA or Department of Transportation statement that the stop is lifted, an FAA account of which centers failed and why, and an official word on whether any outside interference has been ruled out. News Accurate will update the status column when any of them is published, and will keep the 5 p.m. ET timestamp on what was known before then.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has the FAA ground stop been lifted?
Not according to any official source at 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Nov. 13. Claims that it was lifted circulated around 4:30 p.m., but nothing from the FAA, the Transportation Department or Duffy backed them up, and the FAA feed still showed national-stop codes on departures.
Is the FAA ground stop confirmed by the government?
Yes. The FAA command center issued Advisory 111, titled National Ground Stop, at 3:54 p.m. ET, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the stop on X at 4:16 p.m. ET.
Was the FAA outage a cyberattack?
There is no official statement either way. Officials have not named a cause, and outlets including SecurityWeek and Clash Report noted that no one has said whether a cyberattack is suspected.
Did the outage start at the Kansas City center?
That is reported, not confirmed. Local Oklahoma coverage and a pilot relay pointed to the Kansas City center, but the FAA has not said where the failure began.
Why do I see headlines saying the FAA lifted the ground stop?
Many of those headlines are from January 2023, when the FAA lifted a nationwide stop caused by a failure of its pilot notice system. They do not describe the Nov. 13 event.
Sources
- NAS Status: airport events feed — Federal Aviation Administration, read about 4:50 p.m. ET, November 13, 2026
- FAA Nationwide Ground Stop Blamed on Air Traffic Control Comms Issue — Clash Report, November 13, 2026
- FAA Issues Rare National Ground Stop Due to ‘Extraordinary’ Circumstance — Newsweek, November 13, 2026
- Ground stop live updates: FAA orders flights to remain grounded nationwide — USA Today (via Yahoo News), November 13, 2026
- FAA orders rare nationwide ground stop, halting all US departures over ‘extraordinary circumstances’ — MLQ.ai, November 13, 2026
- FAA Ground Stop Issued Due to ‘Extraordinary Circumstances’ — SecurityWeek, November 13, 2026
- FAA grounds planes across US airports amid ‘communication issues’ — KTVU FOX 2, November 13, 2026
- Domestic departures gradually resume after FAA restores its safety system — NPR, January 11, 2023
This article is news reporting and analysis based on the public sources listed above, as they stood on the dates shown. Where officials, lawmakers or analysts disagree, including on whether an action is lawful, their positions are attributed to them; News Accurate is not a court and nothing here is legal advice. Facts in a developing story can change.