Jonathan Chevreau

AMERICA'S SKIES JUST STOPPED — THE FULL STORY ✈️🚨 For the first time since January 2023, the FAA grounded every departing flight in the United States. Here's the full timeline, the numbers, and how it compares to the only two times this ever happened before. WHAT HAPPENED On Friday, November 13, 2026, a telecommunications outage hit air traffic control communications nationwide. With controllers struggling to reach pilots, the FAA ordered all airports ground stopped — departures only. Planes already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations. TIMELINE (all times ET) 3:21 PM — Arrival delays begin at Chicago O'Hare 3:28 PM — Ground stop at O'Hare; 3:31 PM at Midway ~3:30 PM — The FAA's command center is told multiple centers have lost communication and radio contact 3:54 PM — NATIONWIDE GROUND STOP. Advisory 111: "Due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety... all airports are ground stopped... until further notice." International arrivals handled case by case. 4:16 PM — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirms the stop, citing a communication issue affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers ~5:00 PM — Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin: a "telecommunication outage throughout FAA," no indication of a nefarious attack, "not another 9/11" — but "we're not ruling out anything" 5:46 PM — Advisory 120: the stop remains in effect, with departures released one by one through the Command Center as facilities recover. Next FAA update expected 11:00 PM; the listed window ends 11:30 PM — not a promise flights resume then. THE DAMAGE SO FAR • 10,200+ flights delayed and 3,300+ canceled as of 6:40 PM — and still rising (FlightAware figures via the Wall Street Journal) • By 7:00 PM, cancellations passed 3,500 • Hardest hit: Chicago O'Hare (173 cancellations), LaGuardia (143), Dallas/Fort Worth (132), JFK (113), Boston (104) • ~500 flights returned to their origin by 5:50 PM; 100+ diverted • 26,284 departures had been scheduled today — about 11,000 of them after 4 PM • US-bound evening departures from all 42 Eurocontrol states were suspended; a few international flights were released case by case from late afternoon HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE? Only twice before — and today's stop is already bigger than one of them. September 11, 2001 — US airspace was fully closed for about 49 hours. More than 4,500 planes in the air were ordered to land at the nearest airport within about 3 hours, and more than 220 flights were diverted to Canada. January 11, 2023 — A NOTAM system failure grounded domestic departures for about 90 minutes. Around 10,000 flights were delayed and 1,300+ canceled. Cause: contractors accidentally deleted files syncing the live and backup databases. No cyberattack. Today — Already more than twice as long as 2023, with about 2.5x the cancellations — and counting. But unlike 2001, this is departures only: no forced landings, no closed skies. WHAT WE STILL DON'T KNOW The FAA has not confirmed a cause. Unconfirmed reports point to a network software update gone wrong; officials say there's no indication of a cyberattack, but nothing is ruled out. No final totals and no lift time yet — the story is still developing. Sources: FAA Advisory 111, Reuters, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, The Air Current.