Federal officials said Saturday that Friday’s nationwide ground stop, which halted air traffic across the United States for more than four hours, began with what was supposed to be routine maintenance on the Federal Aviation Administration’s communications network, not a cyberattack and not the separate Microsoft outage that hit offices the same week. Airlines were still canceling thousands of flights Saturday as they worked to get planes and crews back where they belong, and the FAA said it expects the schedule to recover by the end of Sunday.
This is a new development since our earlier report on the ground stop being lifted. On Friday night the cause was unclear, and many travelers assumed it was tied to the Microsoft problems. Officials have now described a hardware and network failure, although they say the exact fault is still being investigated.
What officials say went wrong
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a contractor was upgrading a connection from copper wire to fiber-optic cable at a very remote location on Friday afternoon, according to Al Jazeera and TechCrunch. The contractor was identified as L3Harris, the aerospace and defense company that has been working to modernize the FAA’s communications system. After the switch, a router began flooding other routers on the network with traffic.
The FAA’s acting chief technology officer, Rebecca Guy, said two locations were hitting the network at a very high rate, roughly a thousand connections every four to five seconds, TechCrunch reported. The FAA shut both down, stabilized the network and began a root cause analysis. The overload disrupted radar feeds and communication between controllers and aircraft, which is why the FAA stopped departures nationwide.
Duffy said investigators are still sorting out whether the trigger was user error, an installation mistake by L3Harris or a faulty router. He told reporters, “We haven’t determined what the fault was,” while also saying the contractor fell short and that he would hold people accountable, Al Jazeera reported. L3Harris had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
CBS News reported that senior government sources said the problem was limited to older Cisco routers made between 2001 and 2006, and Duffy has described the air traffic control system as “incredibly old.” He also said the timing of the work, done around 3 p.m. on a Friday, would be reevaluated. Large airports switch equipment late at night, he said, but remote sites are often switched during the day.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency saw no evidence of anything nefarious and nothing related to artificial intelligence, a question raised because the FAA had announced a new AI tool for controllers the day before. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there were no signs of a cyberattack, and Microsoft said it had no indication its outage was connected.
“We want to be clear that we have an equipment issue.” — FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, as quoted by TechCrunch
The numbers so far
- Friday: about 9,159 flights canceled and 7,190 delayed, according to FlightAware figures cited by CBS News and UpgradedPoints.
- About 3,500 planes were in the air when the stop began; all landed safely, and at least 827 were diverted, according to Cirium data cited by Newsweek.
- Saturday: more than 3,800 cancellations and about 2,000 delays by mid-morning, per FlightAware via CBS News. The FAA expected 4,000 to 5,000 of the roughly 41,000 flights scheduled Saturday to be canceled, Al Jazeera reported.
- JetBlue canceled about 40% of its Saturday schedule and Delta canceled about 640 flights, roughly 20%, according to UpgradedPoints. United, American and Southwest also posted large numbers of cancellations.
The Associated Press described it as the longest nationwide ground stop in about 25 years, and professional and college sports teams scrambled to find other ways to reach their games.
Why it matters for families
With Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, many families are watching closely. Bedford said he believes the worst is behind us, but travelers should still check their flight in the airline’s app before leaving home, since gates and times are changing quickly. Delta, American, United, Southwest, Alaska and Frontier have posted change waivers. Delta’s, for example, covers Nov. 13 and 14 flights rebooked for travel on or before Nov. 21.
Under federal rules, travelers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed, and who choose not to fly, are generally owed a refund, even on basic economy tickets. Airlines usually are not required to cover hotels and meals for disruptions outside their control, but it is worth asking. Keep receipts and screenshots if you plan to file a travel insurance or credit card claim. Our Thanksgiving travel coverage has more planning tips.
What to watch next
The FAA says a root cause report will be made public once it is complete. Expect questions in Congress about the contractor’s work and the age of the system. The administration raised its air traffic control funding request to $50 billion late Friday, on top of the $12.5 billion already approved, according to CBS News. Some lawmakers may push for that money while others ask for more oversight first. Upstormed News will follow the investigation and the recovery through the weekend. You can also read our coverage of the Microsoft outage that happened the same week.
Read more: U.S. Loses Measles-Elimination Status After 26 Years, Reports Say
Has the ground stop changed your Thanksgiving travel plans? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: Al Jazeera, “US blames system upgrade for longest nationwide FAA ground stop since 9/11” (November 14, 2026); TechCrunch, “Transportation secretary blames ‘routine’ equipment upgrade for grounding flights nationwide” (November 14, 2026); CBS News, “Travelers stranded and thousands of flights canceled after FAA ground stop. Here’s what we know” (November 14, 2026); UpgradedPoints, “Flights Resume After FAA Ground Stop, but Cancellations and Confusion Continue” (November 14, 2026); Associated Press via Daily Record, “AP News Summary” (November 14, 2026)
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