FAA Lifts Nationwide Ground Stop, Resumes Flights; Says No Cyberattack Evidence or Link to Microsoft Outage, Sean Duffy Blames Legacy Equipment, Seeks $50 Billion

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET Friday, nearly five hours after telecommunications failures at air traffic facilities halted departures with more than 3,500 aircraft airborne.

Overloaded Legacy Switches Blamed for FAA Outage

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said radar and communications became unstable at 3:36 p.m. ET at terminal radar approach control facilities (TRACONs) and en route centers.

"Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data," Duffy said at a news conference, citing the FAA’s analog telecom network. He said upgraded IP-based switches did not fail. "It’s the old hardware that went down."

No Cyberattack Evidence; Duffy Seeks $50 Billion

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials have seen "zero evidence" of a cyberattack and no link to Thursday’s Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) email outage, though he did not fully rule it out.

Duffy also asked Congress for $50 billion on top of the $12.5 billion approved in last year’s budget law. "This is an emergency," he said. He warned, "You will have more of these," without full funding.

When asked whether the disruption could cascade into Thanksgiving travel, Duffy said he expects the system to be "back up and operational" as Thanksgiving travel peaks, though he acknowledged it will take time to clear the backlog.

The FAA said it tested its systems before clearing flights to resume. It urged passengers to contact their airlines for updates.

The safety of the flying public is always the FAA’s highest priority. The FAA lifted the ground stop and some flight departures are resuming. Before clearing flights to resume, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm they were stable and that operations remain reliable.…

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) November 14, 2026

Nationwide ground stops are rare. The last one came in January 2023, when a contractor unintentionally deleted files tied to a pilot safety system, and before that only after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The story is developing. Please check back later for updates.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

Image via Shutterstock