Duffy says 'we are back at full operations' day after FAA ground stop
Duffy says 'we are back at full operations' day after FAA ground stop
N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Joey Garrison, Sarah D. Wire and Zac Anderson, USA TODAYSat, November 14, 2026 at 2:56 PM UTC
40
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Nov. 14 the issues that prompted a four-hour, nationwide ground stop and led to ongoing flight cancellations and delays stemmed from work at one location.
Duffy said the travel woes began when a contractor at one of the Federal Aviation Administration's remote locations was replacing aging copper wire with fiber, work he said has been occurring for decades. The router that was installed starting flooding others on the air traffic control system causing communication issues and disruption in radar feeds, he said. Officials are still working to determine whether the problem was due to an error in the installation or a faulty router, Duffy said.
"We are back at full operations," Duffy said.
The agency issued a ground stop soon after 3:36 p.m. ET on Nov. 13, which halted flights around the country, forced passengers to remain stranded or find alternate transportation and left airlines with thousands of disrupted flights to reschedule. The ground stop was lifted at 8:15 p.m., but officials and experts warned disruptions could last days.
More than 5,100 flights into or out of the United States were delayed or canceled on Nov. 14, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, though it's not clear how many of those issues were the result of the ground stop. Major hubs including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport were among the hardest hit.
Flight affected by the FAA ground stop? Here's what airlines owe you
"You will continue to see some delays and cancellations as carriers reschedule flights and reposition aircraft/crews where they are needed most," Duffy said on social media.
Advertisement
Duffy previously said it will take “some time" to get flights back to capacity, but he did not specify how long. The ground stop comes just weeks before Thanksgiving, which typically prompts some of the busiest travel days of the year.
“I think we’re going to be back up and operational as we come into the heat of travel during Thanksgiving,” Duffy said earlier.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the aging FAA telecommunications system failed as newer technology was being patched in. Duffy asked Congress to approve $50 billion to upgrade the system, increasing an earlier request from President Donald Trump.
“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said, adding that switches and routers got “overloaded” in the system’s analog technology. “They started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers, and because of that we shut the system down.”
More than 3,500 airplanes were flying when the ground stop was issued. Still, Mullin told reporters outside the White House that Americans did not have to fear for their safety over the outage and there were no indications the issues were due to a "nefarious attack."
“All your loved ones are safe," he said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Duffy says 'we are back at full operations' day after FAA ground stop
Source: “AOL Breaking”
