Significant equipment malfunctions threw a wrench into air travel on Friday afternoon, as reports emerged of a nationwide ground stop by the FAA, raising concerns about America’s air traffic control reliability.
The FAA’s flight status dashboard indicated ground stops at prominent airports like Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway, attributing these interruptions to equipment failures, effective until 4:30 p.m. Eastern.
Delays were reported across various airports from Newark to Las Vegas and Phoenix, linked to these FAA equipment issues.
Independent journalist Nick Sortor noted that by 3:52 p.m. Eastern, the FAA had put a nationwide ground stop into effect, halting all aircraft departures. He pointed to communication failures as a potential cause, although the FAA had yet to confirm this.
The full scale of the nationwide ground stop report couldn’t be independently confirmed right away. However, the FAA’s updated public dashboard later listed multiple airport-specific restrictions and delays due to equipment problems.
BREAKING: The FAA has issued a NATIONWIDE GROUND STOP, effectively preventing any aircraft from taking off
This is reportedly due to communication issues, but the exact cause has not yet been confirmed by the FAA https://t.co/MVsjQ5h6NR
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) November 13, 2026
At O’Hare, flight departures faced average delays of 45 minutes and were expected to increase. Similarly, Midway was under a ground stop due to the same outages.
Teterboro Airport in New Jersey reported average departure delays of around one hour, while Newark, Las Vegas, and Phoenix experienced growing delays of about 15 minutes.
Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental and Orlando International Airports also faced delays stemming from equipment-related issues, with Orlando seeing average delays of 30 minutes and Houston 15 minutes.
These disruptions occurred even as other major airports were already under distinct restrictions. San Francisco implemented a ground delay due to wind conditions, while Boston and San Diego faced delays linked to high airport volume.
Reports from Seattle controllers shared by Sortor indicated additional operational challenges, but the exact cause, extent, and duration of the ongoing equipment issues remained unclear as Friday afternoon progressed.
