US Nationwide Ground Stop
Passengers wait in line at a baggage claim area at George Bush International Airport on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, in Houston, after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted nationwide ground stops.
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Airlines have canceled thousands of flights across the U.S. as they work to recover from a nationwide ground stop a day earlier that left passengers scrambling for seats and disrupted travel around the world. The Federal Aviation Administration says U.S. air travel schedule should be back to normal by the end of Sunday, two days after what was the nation’s longest ground stop in 25 years. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is blaming a contractor that had been replacing a section of the air traffic control system’s old copper wire with new fiber wire. Duffy says that work somehow caused the system overload.
Regional U.S. air traffic control centers communicate using a complex network that’s “one of the largest telecommunications systems in the country,” and disruptions like those seen on Friday with an hourslong, nationwide grounding of flights can reverberate widely, according to an aviation expert. Michael McCormick, a former airspace manager with the Federal Aviation Administration, said it could take days for airlines — many of which had to divert flights — to resume normal operations after officials lifted the grounding order. The order was lifted late Friday. Here’s a look at what happened, how regional air traffic control centers work, how controllers communicate with pilots and why a problem on the ground can affect flights thousands of miles away, among other issues:
