FAA halts every departing flight in the U.S. after air traffic control outage

No flights can take off from any airport in the United States after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop Friday afternoon, citing a telecommunications outage at the centers that guide planes between airports.

The stop began at about 12:54 p.m. Pacific time. “All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice,” the FAA’s command center said in its alert, CBS News reported. Planes already in the air are allowed to land, and international flights are being handled case by case. The advisory, numbered 111, lists the stop as running until about 8 p.m. Pacific, but it tells departing flights to stay on the ground until further notice.

“There has been a temporary telecommunications outage - out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted,” the FAA said on X about an hour later. “Every flight has been accounted for.”

As of 2:25 p.m. Pacific, the FAA hadn’t announced when departures would resume.

If you’re flying today

• Check your airline’s app or website before you leave for the airport. Departures from Fresno, Merced, Sacramento, San Jose, San Francisco and every other U.S. airport are on hold.
• Expect delays to last after the stop is lifted, since thousands of planes will be out of position.
• The FAA posts airport delays and closures on its National Airspace System status page.

In the Valley

An Alaska Airlines flight was diverted to Fresno Yosemite International Airport, and three planes there returned to the gate to let passengers off Friday afternoon, The Business Journal reported.

Merced Yosemite Regional Airport’s only airline, Contour Airlines, flies to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Its departures fall under the same ground stop. Passengers should check with Contour for changes to Friday’s flights.

What caused it

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a social media post that the stop followed “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” the regional centers that handle planes between airports, and that FAA technicians were investigating, according to CBS News.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House there was “no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious act,” calling it “a telecommunication outage,” CBS reported.

About 3,100 planes were in the air headed for U.S. airports when the stop began, according to the flight tracking site Flightradar24. FlightAware listed at least 8,000 delays and 400 cancellations Friday afternoon, CBS reported.

Nationwide ground stops are rare. The last one was in January 2023, when an FAA computer system that sends safety notices to pilots failed overnight and departures were halted for a few hours, CNBC reported.

This story will be updated.

Sources: FAA on X, CBS News, CNBC, The Business Journal and the FAA’s National Airspace System status page, Nov. 13, 2026.