Archive photograph: FAA control tower at Indianapolis International Airport, December 7, 2025. Photo: AVA Navigate / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized for display; not a photograph of Friday’s disruption.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide halt to departing flights on Friday, November 13, citing safety concerns, according to Reuters. The order followed reports of serious air-traffic-control communications problems and an earlier halt affecting Chicago.
The restriction stops aircraft from taking off; flights already airborne may land. Inbound international flights are being assessed individually. Reuters reported that the agency had not immediately provided further comment explaining the underlying cause.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a communications problem was affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers and technicians were investigating, according to The Guardian’s account of his statement.
Departures held until further notice
The Wall Street Journal independently reported the nationwide order, citing an alert on the FAA’s status page that directed departing traffic to remain grounded until further notice. The alert referred to extraordinary circumstances and safety, but did not detail the cause.
A rare nationwide interruption
The nationwide scale recalls the January 11, 2023 interruption caused by an outage of the Notice to Air Missions system. In its official account of that earlier incident, the FAA said it paused domestic departures while validating flight-safety information and lifted the ground stop as operations resumed. That history does not establish the cause of Friday’s disruption.
Travelers should check their airline’s latest flight status and the FAA’s National Airspace System status page before relying on an earlier departure time. A ground stop is not, by itself, notice that a particular flight has been canceled.
Developing story. This report reflects reporting from Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian published Friday afternoon. The cause and duration of the nationwide restriction remain subject to further official updates.
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