The Federal Aviation Administration halted departures across the United States on Friday, November 13, after telecommunications problems hit air traffic control centers. Aircraft already in the air could continue to their destinations, but airlines could not keep sending more planes into the system. Incoming international flights were being handled individually.
The nationwide stop ended Friday evening. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said departures reopened at 8:15 p.m. Eastern; the FAA issued its cancellation advisory at 8:19 p.m. Duffy blamed overloaded old telecommunications switches and routers that produced inconsistent data. His account did not identify the exact triggering fault.
Two months earlier, federal auditors had warned that the government’s accelerated repair program carried risks of its own. Congress had provided $12.5 billion for the overhaul, yet the FAA had not demonstrated how thousands of installation schedules fitted together or documented a reliable estimate of the program’s full cost.
Officials have not linked Friday’s failure to the modernization installations. The September audit raises a separate question for the agency: how to replace fragile systems without creating more disruption while technicians install their replacements.
The Government Accountability Office found 11,389 individual project schedules as of May 2026, without an integrated master schedule. That means a schedule showing how installations depend on one another and how work at the same facility should be sequenced. Auditors found that separate projects were planning work at shared sites without systematically minimizing interruptions to controllers.
One example makes the problem concrete. At a St. Louis facility, preparations for a voice switch were scheduled for April 2027, with work on information displays planned for January 2028. GAO questioned whether repeated visits could be combined to reduce disruption.
The Transportation Department challenged parts of that assessment. It said the FAA maintained detailed program schedules, its teams were creating and updating estimates of full-life costs, and contractor Peraton was refining software to coordinate projects. GAO said the agency had not shown that its schedules incorporated the necessary dependencies. Both its schedule and cost recommendations remained listed as open on Friday; that status does not describe every action the FAA may have taken since the audit.
Replacing old equipment is already underway. In a November 5 update, the FAA said it had replaced 69 percent of copper wires, installed 226 digital voice switches and moved 26 towers to electronic flight strips. It also began deploying displays intended to replace four information systems dating to the 1980s, with installations at 435 sites planned by the end of 2028.
Equipment age explains only part of the challenge. A 2024 GAO report described an FAA assessment that rated 51 of 138 air traffic control systems unsustainable and another 54 potentially unsustainable. Scarce parts and functions that no longer met operational needs contributed to those ratings. Among 17 systems auditors considered especially concerning, one was two years old and another was 50.
Newark’s communications breakdowns in 2025 showed how connections between facilities can become critical. Controllers handling Newark traffic worked in Philadelphia, while the system processing their radar data remained in New York. Telecommunications lines carried information between them, the FAA explained that May. Its remedies included additional connections, a temporary backup in Philadelphia and a local processing hub to remove dependence on the New York feed.
Backup arrangements have also helped contain failures. When the system distributing flight safety notices went down in February 2025, the FAA said backup and contingency procedures allowed flights to continue. Friday’s nationwide departure pause, the first since January 2023, leaves investigators to establish what communications and backup capacity remained available.
Airlines’ recovery can last beyond a technical repair. About 11,000 flights were scheduled to leave U.S. airports after 4 p.m. Friday, flight-data company Cirium told CNBC. Crews can reach their daily working limits while waiting. Aviation analyst Robert Mann told Reuters that a halt lasting through the evening would probably leave airlines resolving disruptions through the weekend.
The White House and Transportation Department asked Congress on Friday for another $30.1 billion for airports and air traffic control, Reuters reported. A larger federal commitment would still leave the FAA responsible for explaining delivery costs. GAO’s September review found that its high-level figures excluded government expenses, most operating costs for the first modernization phase and all costs for the second phase.
The FAA’s overnight operations plan kept coordination hotlines open and scheduled another system-status update for 6 a.m. Eastern Saturday, November 14. Its cancellation of the national order left airlines to recover their individual schedules.
