US FAA orders rare nationwide ground stop for all departing flights

Update: departures resume, but Australians face a backlog

Updated November 14, 2026, 9:00pm AEDT. The departure stop reported below has been lifted. The original report is retained in a clearly marked historical section.

Australian holidaymakers have been changing plans and searching for accommodation after a US air-traffic communications failure disrupted flights nationwide. The departure ban has been lifted, but that does not mean every affected passenger has been rebooked or every delayed service can leave immediately. Airlines still have aircraft, crews and passengers out of position.

Sydney Airport said US-bound services could resume from Mascot after a temporary Saturday-morning halt, with passengers told to obtain their own flight's latest position from the airline. Disruption was also being felt at major US airports including New York's JFK, Los Angeles and San Diego. The account below describes information available on November 14, not a guarantee about any individual booking.

A cancelled connection, a cruise and a long bus trip

Adelaide traveller Trish Crabb and her husband were at JFK when they learnt their Delta service to Miami had been cancelled. Their holiday itinerary included driving from Miami to Fort Lauderdale to join a cruise. Crabb described a queue with at least 200 people ahead of her for their Delta flight alone. Her husband was looking for a nearby hotel while they hoped another flight would become available.

She said the people around her were remaining calm despite the uncertainty. In a separate case, Rivkah Brown of Myrtleford in Victoria was stranded in San Diego when her Delta flight to Las Vegas was cancelled. She had come off a cruise and was travelling to meet her fiancé. With little information beyond the cancellation, she decided to take a bus instead, facing a trip of nearly ten hours. Brown described the disruption as disappointing but something she had to accept.

Communications failure, not a confirmed attack

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the nationwide departure stop on Friday US time after communications trouble affected the 22 regional Air Route Traffic Control Centres that manage aircraft between airports. The agency cited exceptional circumstances and safety. Aircraft already airborne were allowed to continue towards safe landings rather than being ordered out of the sky.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said airspace reopened at 8:15pm Eastern Standard Time after roughly five hours. He later attributed the failure to ageing telecommunications equipment and routers becoming overloaded with data, producing inconsistent information. The precise chain of events remained under investigation. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said early checks pointed to a telecommunications problem, with no evidence at that point of a deliberate cyberattack; investigators had not closed off every possibility.

Officials also examined speculation about a newly introduced AI support system, but no causal link was established. President Donald Trump rejected the suggestion that the new AI technology caused the failure. Microsoft separately said it had no indication that the FAA ground stop was connected to its own recent service outage, and Mullin also said he saw no reason to join the two incidents.

Disruption figures continued to change

The initial Australian traveller report recorded more than 11,000 delayed or cancelled flights and at least 600 diversions, including returns to departure airports. A separate later snapshot from FlightAware listed about 9,814 delays and more than 4,749 cancellations on flights into and out of the US. These are evolving counts with different reporting cut-offs, not figures to combine into a single settled total.

About 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million people had been scheduled to depart US airports after 4pm Eastern time on Friday. That scheduled-traffic measure is different from the number actually cancelled. The disruption was the first nationwide grounding since the FAA computer failure in January 2023, and only the second since the September 11, 2001 attacks. US authorities also asked Eurocontrol to pause US-bound services from its 42 member states.

The FAA said its systems were thoroughly tested before operations restarted. Duffy nevertheless warned that restarting flights would depend on crew availability and available capacity. A lifted ground stop is therefore different from an immediate return to the published timetable. Aircraft already airborne have trained pilots and controllers with procedures for lost communications, including maintaining earlier instructions, using filed flight plans if required and trying alternative radio contact.

Priority help for departures within 72 hours

The Australian Travel Industry Association says travellers due to depart within the next 72 hours should contact their travel agent, tour operator or airline if they have not already received advice. Chief executive Dean Long said these imminent departures were the priority. People travelling later were asked to give providers room to assist the most urgent cases first. ATIA said it was working with airlines on rebooking and rerouting and providing common customer messages to accredited travel businesses.

Travellers should keep checking their airline's website or app rather than assume every flight is affected in the same way. The Australian government's travel advice urged Australians to follow developments and contact airlines for updates and rebooking, while retaining its normal-safety-precautions advice for the US. The accompanying empty-terminal photograph is illustrative and does not show a US airport or the reported ground-stop event.