A person looks at a departures board showing delays and cancellations at LaGuardia Airport on November 13, 2026, in the Queens borough of New York. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday ordered a nationwide stopover on all departing flights “due to extraordinary circumstances and for safety reasons.”
Adam Gray | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Flight disruptions persisted Sunday, two days after the Federal Aviation Administration blocked departures nationwide for more than four hours as airlines scrambled to get travelers and crews on board.
“We slept here,” said Beth Martin, who was trying to return home to Birmingham, Alabama, from New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday at the end of her daughter’s birthday trip. They were booked for Saturday evening, and when the delay announcements started coming in from Delta AirlinesThey decided to make good use of the extra time: after strolling through Central Park, they window shopped on Fifth Avenue.
But when the flight was canceled, the waitlist on a relief flight looked grim, and their original hotel downtown was charging about $700 for an extra night. They both slept at LaGuardia on Saturday. She said they found wheelchairs for sleeping outside of security.
Signs of improvement
More than 1,400 U.S. flights there were canceled as of 7 a.m. ET and more than 2,000 were delayed, according to FlightAware data. That’s far fewer than the roughly 6,700 cancellations on Saturday and the more than 9,200 on Sunday, when the FAA halted all departures to U.S. airports.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Saturday linked the problem to a router and worked to update it from copper wires, a system overseen by L3Harris Technologiesto a fiber optic system. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the upgrades were part of “routine” maintenance for moving to fiber optics.
“We support the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the grounding of our nation’s air transportation on November 13,” L3Harris said in a statement Saturday afternoon.
Airlines waived change fees and fare differences and offered pilots and flight attendants extra pay to reduce delays.
Customers told CNBC they were booked on multiple flights before boarding.
Justine Fritz, who works in sales for a consumer goods company, was in New York on Friday for a business event. She tried five different flights before catching a flight to Houston, then flew four hours back to Minneapolis after her Saturday flight was canceled. Fritz said she had so many boarding passes that TSA wouldn’t let her through security at first.
“It was bananas,” she told CNBC at the door. Fritz said she took the opportunity to go shopping and get a haircut, but she’s still disappointed.
“I’m missing the first hour of the Vikings game,” she said.
Martin said his journey home with his daughter would take even longer. Delta has them booked in Memphis and her husband will drive the four hours from Birmingham to pick them up.
Shortly after the ground stop, the longest since 9/11, Duffy pushed Congress for up to $50 billion to modernize America’s aging air traffic control system. A day later, Democratic lawmakers reversed course, citing unspent money from existing funding, which includes Congress’ approval last year of $12.5 billion for airport and air traffic control improvements over five years.
“Our committee, on behalf of the traveling public, will hold the administration accountable for what happened to ensure this chaos never happens again,” Reps. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), ranking member of the aviation subcommittee, said in a joint statement.
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