US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says old air traffic control system overload caused nationwide ground stop
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a White House press briefing that the reason for the FAA’s nationwide ground stop order on November 13 was that an “extremely old air traffic control system” was “overloaded.” He said the system routers had inconsistent data due to data overload, and the FAA shut down the system to ensure safety.
Duffy said that they have an extremely old air traffic control system. He added that the routers were actually overloaded with data and started giving them inconsistent data. For that reason, they shut down the system. He also said the president has been asking Congress for the past year to fully fund the construction of a brand-new air traffic control system, and called for giving them the money to fix it. This time, he wants $50 billion, up from the previous request of about $30 billion.
Previously, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop order at about 15:54 Eastern Time, and due to communication problems affecting all air route traffic control centers, ordered all airports to stop departures for safety reasons. The order was lifted at about 20:16. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said it was currently a telecommunications outage, with no evidence of malicious attack at this time. Duffy said that when the ground stop was in effect, there were more than 3,500 aircraft in the air, all of which landed safely.
Original source:
Title: Live updates on FAA ground stop: Order lifted after hourslong halt to US departures
Publisher: CNN
Publication date: 2026-11-13
URL: cnn.com/2026/11/13/us/live-news/flights-ground-stop-faa
Source type: media report (live news briefing)
Verification status: Relevant update paragraphs were actually read this time; verification date 2026-11-13
Supporting content: Duffy’s reported remarks about the extremely old air traffic control system, router overload, and his request that Congress fully fund it, including $50 billion
ABAB AI Insight
Duffy directly attributed this nationwide ground stop to overload of switches and routers in the legacy network, rather than to an external attack. This is consistent with the FAA’s earlier description of a temporary telecommunications outage and the command center notice of a communications failure, but it narrows the technical details to hardware overload causing inconsistent data. The system uses decades-old TDM telecommunications and outdated hardware, and it has long been a modernization priority for the FAA and the Transportation Department.
The funding request is not a new issue. Congress previously passed the One Big Beautiful Bill and appropriated about $12.5 billion for air traffic control modernization. Duffy has repeatedly said that this is only partial funding, and that a full rebuild (new hardware, new software, new telecommunications) would require an additional roughly $30 billion. In this briefing, the request was raised to $50 billion. The president and the Transportation Department’s goal is to complete the system rebuild in 2028. This incident provides an immediate example for that long-term request.
After service was restored, Duffy made clear that it would take time to untangle the effects: crews and aircraft were out of position, some airlines had already canceled the remainder of that evening’s flights, and delays were expected to continue into the next day. Compared with the 2023 NOTAM system outage, this event lasted longer and had a broader impact, but all aircraft landed safely. The key indicators are the speed of Congress’s response to additional funding and follow-up recovery reports on routers and frequencies at the various ARTCC facilities.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Overload of routers in an aging air traffic control network can trigger nationwide data inconsistencies, leading to safety ground stops.
The Transportation Secretary is directly tying the ground stop to full congressional funding for a new system, with the funding gap expanding from partial appropriations to full rebuild needs.
After a ground stop is lifted, flight departures can resume, but network reorganization and delays will continue for hours into the next day.