A general view of Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 13, 2026, as passengers face delays and holdups after the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all flights.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Flight disruptions continued Saturday and could extend into the weekend as airlines raced to recover from the Federal Aviation Administration’s longest domestic shutdown since Sept. 11, a move the Trump administration blamed on a failure of communications equipment in air traffic control.
More than 3,000 U.S. flights were canceled Saturday and nearly 1,000 were delayed as of 5:45 a.m. ET, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. That’s on top of about 9,000 U.S. flight cancellations and more than 7,000 delays on Friday, although some disruptions were due to bad weather.
Part of the job of untangling from ground stop is getting the planes where they need to be. The ground stopover forced many planes to divert to other airports.
Airlines are running one of the lightest schedules on Saturday and deploying as many spare planes and crews as possible to get travelers and employees where they need to be as they are eager to start fresh for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.
About 3 million people are generally expected to fly Saturday, according to aviation data company Cirium.
The FAA interrupted flights departing from the United States around 4 p.m. on Friday, a ground stopover that lasted more than four hours. Routers were overloaded with data and began providing inconsistent information to air traffic control centers, so the United States issued a ground shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a news conference Friday evening.
He blamed the problem on outdated U.S. infrastructure and said Congress needed to approve more funds to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control. Aging equipment and a shortage of air traffic controllers have for years aroused the anger of airline executives, who complain about the cost of the resulting disruptions.
It was the second time the FAA had conducted a nationwide ground check since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Trump administration officials said it did not appear to be a cyberattack.
The United States has the busiest airspace in the world.
“Before authorizing the resumption of flights, we thoroughly tested our systems to confirm that they were stable and that operations remained reliable,” the FAA said Friday.
The disruption also disrupted travel for NBA, NHL and college teams, who struggled to reach their destinations in time for this weekend’s games.
Duffy said college football teams traveling on charter flights could receive priority.
“I would encourage these football teams to contact the FAA to plan their flight schedules and ensure that the games will take place tomorrow,” he said during a press briefing Friday.
The Southeastern Conference announced on X that some games had been moved to Sunday due to flight disruption.
“We are in close communication with our member institutions to assess potential disruptions and coordinate appropriate responses,” the SEC said in a statement shared on X.
Gn usa
