US lifts nationwide flight halt after telecom failure; Air India warns of disruption on US routes

The Federal Aviation Administration halted every departing flight at American airports on Friday after a telecommunications failure knocked out radio and radar links at its air route traffic control centres, then reopened the airspace more than four hours later. The nationwide ground stop began at about 3:54 pm ET (2:24 am IST on Saturday) and ended at 8:15 pm ET (6:45 am IST), according to the FAA advisory and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

Air India said on Saturday that the outage could disrupt its flights to and from the country and asked passengers to check their flight status before leaving for the airport.

What the FAA said

The FAA’s first message said there had been “a communication issue” affecting its Air Route Traffic Control Centers and ordered departures held “until further notice”, citing “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”. According to reports of the order, every aircraft already in the air was accounted for and could continue to its destination, while inbound international flights would be handled case by case. The FAA’s operations plan initially kept restrictions in force until 11 pm ET.

Reports say the failure began at the Chicago centre and spread within minutes to Boston, Washington, New York and Minneapolis. The FAA first held eastbound traffic and then extended the stop to the whole country. Stranded aircraft soon outnumbered gates at Chicago O’Hare, and airlines diverted some flights to smaller cities. Canada’s air navigation provider applied traffic measures at Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver, saying its own systems were normal.

Why the system failed

Duffy said radar and communications at the centres became unstable, with systems overloaded with data and showing inconsistent information, so the FAA shut traffic down. “The old hardware went down,” he said, calling it “old legacy equipment” and not the FAA’s new AI-based scheduling system, SMART, which was switched on at all 22 en route centres on November 10. The company behind SMART has also said it is not involved.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was “no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack”, called it a telecommunications outage, and said it appeared to be mechanical, though he added that nothing was completely certain. A separate report says an update to the private network used by the control system triggered a reboot that crashed it. Officials have not confirmed the technical cause.

How the halt unfolded, Friday November 13 (US Eastern time)

1. About 3:30 pmFAA command centre told several route centres have lost radio and radar links
2. 3:54 pmNationwide ground stop for all departures
3. 8:15 pmDuffy says the airspace has been reopened
4. 9:01 pmFirst departure from Newark after the stop, a United flight to Edinburgh

Delays after the stop

Reopening did not mean normal service. Duffy said it was “going to take some time to unwind what happened this afternoon”. At least 10,000 flights into, out of or within the US were delayed on Friday, according to FlightAware, and a Cirium analysis cited in reports put the number of passengers hit by cancellations at about 1.5 million. JetBlue cancelled all flights from JFK and Boston except those to Europe, and Newark said delays and cancellations were continuing at 8:45 pm.

American Airlines said some flights had begun to receive clearance but warned of unavoidable cancellations. United opened its emergency operations centre.

It was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when the FAA’s pilot-notice system failed, and, according to reports, the second since the September 11, 2001, attacks. The outage also came a day after a widespread Microsoft service disruption, which Mullin said was not linked.

What Air India told passengers

Air India said on X that “a nationwide ground stop is currently in effect across the US due to communication outages affecting air traffic operations”, adding that its teams were “closely monitoring the situation” and would share updates. It said departures from US airports were affected and that flights to and from the US could see consequential disruption. Passengers were advised to check the latest status of their flights and plan their trip to the airport accordingly.

The statement is a general advisory: it does not name routes or flights, and none of the reports reviewed lists specific Air India cancellations. Travellers from India booked on US routes are being told to rely on the airline’s flight status updates rather than assume a schedule.

What happens next

Investigators are examining the cause, and Duffy has used the failure to press Congress to fund a modern air traffic control system, pointing to the Newark delays of 2025 as part of a continuing problem. No date has been given for findings. Airlines have asked passengers to check flight status before travelling.