FAA issues national ground stop

starting to see some explanations for what's going on

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/faa-temporarily-halts-flights-ac...

> The outage appears to be affecting a telecommunications network overseen by L3Harris Technologies, according to people briefed on the matter. The network handles crucial radio frequencies that air-traffic controllers use to communicate with pilots, the people said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the outage also affected the radar feeds that controllers use to keep aircraft safely separated in the skies.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/faa-issues-nationwide-ground-st...

> An update to the private communications network that connects America's air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, leading to a crash and a communications outage, multiple sources told CBS News. The system is operated by L3Harris, which did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment.

Info on this is amazingly sparse. Apparently Sec. Duffy posted something on X/Twitter, and that's all the news media have.

Looking at LAX departures, it looks like nothing has departed since about 10:30 AM PST, and everything later is showing Delayed or Cancelled. There are times after Delayed, but it's not clear those times mean anything. Some are now in the past.

"flysfo.com" is too overloaded to display departures. Stuck at "loading...".

JFK departure status shows almost solid "Delayed".

No good explanations anywhere.

Botched rollout of AI for ATC announced yesterday as rolling out nationwide?

> The agency wrote on Nov. 10 that after the D.C. test, it will “now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country to reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public.” The tech was already being deployed at some airports.

https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...

Secretary Mullin/DHS is confirming that this will likely be an extended outage...

> “This isn’t going to just be be resolved and turned around within the hour"

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/13/us/ground-stop-natio...

> An update to the private communications network that connects America's air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, leading to a crash and a communications outage, multiple sources told CBS News. The system is operated by L3Harris, which did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment.

I'm watching it live on ADSBexhange, here's a flight I picked at random going approximately past me that'll land in Detroit about an hour from now... there's not much left over the US over 40,000 feet. Only 2 planes over Indiana at that altitude right now.

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a519b8

It's Delta Airlines flight 1070

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL1070

Edit: It landed safely. Continuing to watch our airspace clear out, most traffic at 40,000+ feet is inbound international flights

Anyone have a screen shot? I just see "NO Advisory"

edit: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...

I have no idea whether this particular failure was Microsoft's fault, but I was in the air on September 14, 2004 when a substantial portion of the southwestern US's air traffic control went down:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/lost-radio-contact-leaves-pilots-o...

(I was near ORD at the time, flying toward the outage area. We diverted to ORD, and the pilot was very friendly about it.)

At the time I thought it was Microsoft's fault, as Windows 95 and 98 were susceptible to crashing when GetTickCount() overflowed, and this ATC crash was due to a 32-bit millisecond counter on a Windows machine overflowing, but in this particular instance the system was apparently not running on a version of Windows with this particular bug and the failure was just an application error.

Aren't computers great? :)

United just departed EWR Newark for Tel Aviv https://www.flightradar24.com/UAL84/42909d99

And several from IAD Dulles. https://www.flightradar24.com/UAL992/4290a5d2

All seem to be international though.

More info on AP [1]. Looks like a comms issue. The figures they quoted for the overhaul are absolutely insane - almost $45 billion (I used to work in telecom):

> "The government has been working to overhaul the outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year."

> "Duffy has said that another $30 billion will be needed to complete the work, and the White House has begun lobbying Congress to approve it."

[1] https://apnews.com/article/flights-halted-airports-faa-f81b0...

On a plane about to take off and obviously we didn’t. The captain is very confused and says he doesn’t know what this means.

Maybe I’m misremembering but hasn’t this only happened like, twice in recent memory? 9/11, and for like two hours two or three years ago

I wonder if this will close the Starship launch window starting at 5:45pm EST. The FAA issued the commercial launch license earlier today. That launch is under a separate set of "commercial space rules", but presumably they need to coordinate with air traffic control.

Update: Starship launched on schedule.

> DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY

I'm sure there is a reason for it but can they not be a little bit more specific?

I do not really understand what the FAA means by “inbound international flights will be managed on a case by case basis.”

I am watching planes stacked up on final approach to land at KBOS as I type. From flight radar 24 they are a mix of foreign and domestic. So incoming flights are clearly being managed here.

Does this imply some potential risk from inbound international air traffic? Or maybe the FAA meant outbound? Something else I am missing?

Connected? "US National Weather Service reports nationwide internet, communications issues" (Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-national-weather-servi...

Seems related to the rollout of their new AI tool? [0]

[0]https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...

My wife is on a plane on the ground at ORD (they just landed) and they have been told they can use the restrooms but can't get off the planes. Any reason why folks wouldn't be allowed to deplane at the end of the journey if it was a radar or comms issue? They can pull up to the gate using flags . . .

Is it something else?

Wonder if this is related upstream or tangentially?:

https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/national-weather-se...

NWS radar and 911 systems are also showing downtime according to https://downdetector.com/

Likely Atc system outage, saw this at Chicago

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ground-stop-chicago-oha...

Oh cool, I’m on a plane rn about an hour from my destination.

Edit) landed pretty uneventfully.

Use this link for latest advisory: https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/

Current as of 1340 PDT:

    ATCSCC ADVZY 117 DCC 11/13/2026 ALL CENTERS EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES IMPLEMENTED

    MESSAGE: 
 

    EVENT TIME: 13/2120 - 14/0500
    CONSTRAINED FACILITIES: ZTL
    DCC HAS IMPLEMENTED EXTENDED FLIGHT PLAN DROP TIMES TO 240 MINUTES
    FOR ALL ENROUTE CENTERS DUE TO NATIONWIDE COMMS FAILURE. 
 

    EFFECTIVE TIME: 132121-140530

    SIGNATURE: 26/11/13 21:21

Related? https://nasstatus.faa.gov/ has a notice:

We are experiencing technical difficulties. We apologize for the inconvenience but please check back soon, as we are working to have the issues resolved.

Thank you, FAA Web Operations Team

Geez this is pretty awful timing for business travelers

Looks like flights are taking off again, at least from SFO. I just heard a flight takeoff ( JAL57 ) : https://imgur.com/cEUDZZk

From earlier this week on HN:

“FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traffic control”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50388001

dumb question but do the airport gates get "too full" if all plans are grounded? Do airports sort of expect some constant turnover to have enough open gates to service everything? Do you end up with a line of plans waiting for a gate?

Maybe just paranoia but it seems slightly suspicious for this to happen while we are in the middle of discussing massive funding and overhauls to the air traffic control systems. This will certainly end up pushing a lot more funding into these programs and companies now that were trying to sell more expensive systems.

Microsoft Copilot went down?

Maybe this has something to do with it?

https://www.weather.gov/afc/radaroutage

If a lot of planes on the ground were prohibited from taking off, but couldn't get back to their gates due to congestion/traffic, where will the planes go that are still in the air and ultimately land? Just disembark passengers out on the tarmac? (hopefully with some sort of bus pickup)

Just announced at Honolulu airport that flights to the west coast will be released

Looks lifted now? Not showing for me. https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis?adv_date=11132026&a... https://www.fly.faa.gov/adv/adv_otherdis?adv_date=11132026&a...

Edit: screenshot here: https://i.postimg.cc/XqcsDQw9/image.png Edit 2: different link still showing: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...

From the Financial Times:

> Los Angeles Airport and Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International were among those that were closed, according to a list on the regulator’s website.

> The outages at O’Hare and Midway were listed as “due to equipment outage”.

https://www.ft.com/content/c9b119ff-d1da-46a7-b2b3-4ad0544ff...

I've just watched a plane take off from seattle.

It is hard to not rapidly spiral into pure conspiracy theory territory, but one has to ask how many "black swan" events can you accept within a period of a few days before you start to question things?

A sequence of events:

  - Democrats win congress : it sets a clock to act before January
  - Jensen is taken out, throwing nVidia into chaos
  - Email comms are blacked out for an entire day across government and major enterprises
  - Air traffic is stopped nation wide the next day

Can anybody join these dots?

Is this still real? It says NO Advisory now :\

AT&T is experiencing a massive outage. Appears they are the provider for the Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs).

EDIT: Time line doesn’t add up for this. Likely unrelated

Listening to SFO Tower, the latest info I’ve heard is an expected stop until 04:00 UTC, but flights departing to Asia via west departure may be permitted to depart.

How did ITA Airways 609 take off from JFK at 530pm?

About 15 mins ago I got off BART at Daly City and a plane took off from SFO and flew overhead. Didn't look like anything special, just a regular passenger jet to me.

No deploy fridays

I set up a basic tracker here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vThhccsTanAz...

AI is updating it hourly. Since it is AI, always verify yourself.

maybe unrelated but, I just noticed my LAX region server with Fly is experiencing issues

https://status.flyio.net/incidents/01M76HANB3XQC6WYKPA69WQN8...

FAA expands AI advice to manage air traffic congestion across entire US airspace https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...

Is it because it's friday the 13th?

What does this mean outside of the US, I.e. I suspect planes that should be in places abroad won't be so ongoing cancellations and crew in wrong places etc.

Is conjecture allowed? I have no evidence of this, but I've noticed that often before big meetings between superpowers one side or the other seems to do a minor or subtle attack as a kind of sabre-rattling/warning to the other side to try to gain leverage (and show them they're not to be trifled with). So with that, I wonder if this is a China/NVIDIA accusation connection.

But I'm completely just spitballing here.

matches with the Doomsday post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50482379 :)

Likely some power outage connected to a critical main fiber connection somewhere..

Working link: https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...

effective 2:54PM - 10:30PM central time

   ATCSCC Advisory
   ATCSCC 111 DCC 11/13/2026 NATIONAL GROUND STOP
   MESSAGE:
   
   EVENT TIME: 13/2053 - 14/0400
   DUE TO EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND FOR REASONS OF SAFETY.
   ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT OPERATORS, BY ORDER OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION
   COMMAND CENTER ALL AIRPORTS ARE GROUND STOPPED. ALL DEPARTING
   TRAFFIC SHOULD REMAIN GROUND STOPPED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. INBOUND
   INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS WILL BE MANAGED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS.
   
   EFFECTIVE TIME:   132054 - 140430
   SIGNATURE:   26/11/13 20:54

Due to "rolling frequency outtage" [sic]: From a claimed photo of FAA documents (I replaced the all caps with lowercase):

"... ground stop is in effect for all destinations until further notice due to rolling frequency outtage in multiple centers..."

and

"... the ground stop is now a nationwide ground stop for all centers, all destinations until further notice due to widespread frequency outtages.. ..."

https://x.com/Anna_Giaritelli/status/2121344915091206311

Which is cited in the Hindustan Times (leading Indian newspaper), which refers to the Twitter source as a journalist.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/faa-issues...

----

(EDIT: @mods / @dang: Around January this year (iirc) somehow my account ended up rate-limited, posts relatively demoted (start low, drop quickly), vouches/flags relatively ineffective, etc. Usually I don't care too much and haven't bothered to do anything about it but it is sometimes annoying - it limits participation - and right now it buries some of the more valuable information in the discussion. Could you look into fixing it? I don't know of a reason this account would be penalized. Thanks.)

apparently SMART started rolling out yesterday:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/SMART_One-Pager.pdf

A lot of red on the "MiseryMap"

https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/

Odd timing with the market closure & RAF bases on lockdown from drone alert

Perhaps it’s problems with the new AI tool the FAA has been rolling out:

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/modern-skies-trumps-transportat...

Do we know if this is something related to a ransomware attack of some sort or a cyber attack?

Seeing some takeoffs again at 22:44 UTC.

If/when civilization collapses, flights will be the first thing to go.

Perhaps it's related to National Weather Service radar failure

>The FAA has issued a nationwide departure ground stop “due to several impacts to ATC Frequencies and/or Radar capabilities,” the Air Current reported, referring to air traffic control systems. The FAA command center said it does not have further information on the “timing or cause of this outage,” the publication said.

(from Bloomberg)

Does this affect the SpaceX launch?

Friday 13th…

@dang can you fix the link.

flighty showing massive disruptions

https://flighty.com/airports

My guess is that this is some AI-motivated cyber attack

people are reporting it's still going on....

"Today's event is therefore generally being described as the third nationwide grounding event since September 11, 2001, counting 9/11 itself. The three incidents differ significantly in cause and scope."

Obligatory Pirates of the Silicon Valley scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US-Wifhg2Mo

In the last 2 days I’ve had 2 PoS machines not working, MS email borked, and now this. I speculate AI CYBER ATTACKS are underway.

Somethings telling me it relates to MS outages or Azure

I do not believe in coincidences. First Microsoft, then anthropic, now ATC radio. Something big is going on.

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50489678

What is the change that it is a coincidence?

installing Survival LLM now.

I'm sure this isn't related https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...

Maybe the real hackers were the AI agents we made along the way.

Did an agent escape containment and start using the atc radio channel for swarm comms to collaborate on creating the most realistic catgirl feet?

waiting for the OpenAi post saying Astra 6.5 tried to book a flight

My guess is this is either related to Microsoft, Nvidia, SpaceX (Starship launch in an hour), Iran, rogue AI, aliens, or all of the above

Reading this from the runway. Yay.

US-bound flight from YYZ. They shut down #2 engine and parked us in inactive runway. Pilot came on and said he was reading something about "ATC radio frequency issue" but has been told by United ops that it'll be cleared in ~30 min from now.

Wow, I have never seen this many comments on Hacker News that are using presuppositions on what it could be without any sort of logical thinking.

This is why I’m glad the New York subway still runs on OS/2[0].

- [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-forgotten-operating-syst...

FAA down.

Weather service down.

Frances fridges down.

Microsoft down.

Would they tell us they were getting hacked, if this was a prelude to war ?

Or would they just say "issues yet to be determined" ?

Interesting times ladies and gentlemen.

Or, this is just what everyone that said "dont move everything into the cloud" warned about.

Yeah, probably that. :|

If this is related to new FAA SMART system they're rolling out, it's might have bean so smart it grounded itself before anyone found out it was broken.

Optimistic case:

A freak FUBAR of legacy systems, an unfortunate alignment of circumstances that could have happened anytime.

Pessimistic (paranoid) cases:

1. Intentional hacking by a foreign adversary 2. Vibe coding whoops 3. OpenAI agents "running experiments"

Is this going to end up being the work of rogue Anthropic or OpenAI agents that “unexpectedly” escaped so they can regulate open weight models under the guise of preventing them from doing the same thing 6 months from now?

It’s not working.

What do you mean by not working exactly?

Not sure.

Some guy sitting at his computer after typing to Claude: “Just curious what would happen if all planes in the US were grounded at once”

Claude: Transmogrifying…

Shall I stop all trains too?

Cogitated for 50s · done 14:53 PM

Think of all those pilots timing out on the tarmac.

There was a time when we'd get clear and honest communication about this but now our admin is Baghdad Bobs all the way down. They will lie about it, even if there is no rational reason to lie about it, because this admin and the movement associated with it wants you eternally guessing what the truth is.

Seems like FAA's Outlook<-->Excel integration at Office365 has been broken

Guessing this means Claude doesn’t do COBOL very well.

So we yolo’d a Friday merge & deploy, ‘ay?

Golly, what are the chances that Microsoft is down for a day followed by the ATC comms?

Sure smells like something foreboding

Whatever it is, it probably has to do with Jensen Huang

It's Friday the 13rd after all ...

Wild to see this on adsb.lol, nothing taking off, just some big landing queues

On CNBC:

> Airlines said flights in the air would continue.

This is a huge relief! phew

Homeland Security saying "Telecommunications" outage. Whatever that means. Listening to a live broadcast NBCNEWS.

I noticed several T-38s flying around. Maybe it's the beginning of a FAA-led coup d' etat.

Didn't they just upgrade from a system from DOS?... Maybe the new system wasn't backward compatible :-)

Seems like flights have been getting grounded since 1:30ish and they just kept it on the DL until the stocks were safe

If tomorrow there is third major outage of an important infra-structure level service, maybe I will start to get a little conspiratorial about cyberattacks and such.

Someone forgot to put their phone in airplane mode

New AI software update deployed using AI?

Reporter: There are reports that this is AI related. Markwayne Mullin: We call it SI. Got it? SI. OK?

We are run by morons.

Fox News says that Markwayne Mullin says that the FAA says that it's not a cyberattack, and it's not something like 911. Just heard that, don't have a page to point to at the moment...

Update: https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/faa-issues-nationwide-grou...

Is OpenAI testing "sandbox testing" their agents again?

Does the FAA use Microsoft 363 (and counting)?

An Eithad airways pilot decided it didn’t apply to them

Flight EY8 from Boston to Abu Dhabi https://fr24.com/ETD6PX/429055e2

Its outlook affecting their "frequencies" :D

If it turns out the AI virus has infected ATC, I'm not sure I'll ever fly again.

The UFO community is going to have a field day

Speculation is bad for my health.

Ran out of Maxell MD2HDs?

Here comes the manufacturered AI cyber attack on critical infra to hammer the point that government needs complete control over AI.

Mechahitler deployed to FAA by Elon minions? Could be next Netflix show

Uh-oh, better switch back to the floppy disks

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-faa-says-it-will-phase-o...

Rogue AI? Iran? Aliens? Coup? Anyone taking bets yet?

Man, having some high speed trains might be useful right about now.

Did Crowdstrike release another zero-day?

This is what happens when you get rid of floppy disks, smh

First real cyber attack on the US, presumably. Or a giant cluster...

They’re waiting for windows update?

Homeland security secretary says "telecommunication outage".

...so at least it's not something 911-ish

Somewhere is someone who works for ATC IT who was giving an MS IT friend shit last night.

Anthropic IPO just around the corner...

My guess is a dopey AI rollout caused it: https://arstechnica.com/features/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advi...

yesterday Thursday November 12

> "FAA expands AI advice to manage air traffic congestion across entire US airspace"

* https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-...

> "FAA Is Rolling Out Its AI Air Traffic Tool Nationwide"

* https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...

And now Canada is offline too (our LAX pilot said)

I know we're all having fun in the comments. But please think about this next time you vote, local/county/state/national. There are people in charge who are not funding upgrading these systems, because their constituents don't want their taxes raised to pay for it. That lack of funding is annoying to some, has an enormous economic impact to many, and is now risking tens of thousands of lives who are literally up in the air. There are planes carrying body parts destined for transplant that are grounded. People who need to get home to their families. All because nobody wanted to pay for what we knew we needed to fix.

how the hell the FAA's systems dont have double or triple redundancy just like Airplanes are required to ?

They’re going to blame this on Iran, aren’t they?

This also happened on 9/11 which is curious because the NVIDIA thing caused a public rift with Lutnick yesterday:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/bessent-blames-lutnick...

We paid more than $800MM for "route suggestions", btw, a problem that doesn't seem to benefit at all from "AI"—a term reserved for fantastical algorithms. Surely you could solve this with traditional search algorithms without sacrificing your dignity!

Is there another “rogue agent” now?

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Took themselves off floppy disks and now look what happens. /s

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The government's AI tool company likely had no understanding of context window limitations (although could be Iran or a false flag to be blamed on Iran) https://www.flyingmag.com/faa-smart-ai-now-active-at-22-artc...

Company that created the tool (called Airspace Intelligence) is interesting in terms of demographics for these types of companies - implies lots if the tool 'does not work as designed' (which it will obviously not)

https://www.linkedin.com/company/airspace-intelligence/peopl...

Maybe related to this? https://gizmodo.com/the-faa-is-rolling-out-its-ai-air-traffi...

Can't help but suspect that "AI" is to blame and the response is to sort of ban open source AI, or owning too much compute!

I wonder if it was Claude or ChatGPT? My money would be on the latter. Anthropic seems to generally have better security and guardrails, and apparently OpenAI’s newest cyber model is extremely capable.

No longer exists? Temporary glitch? (Edit: OP url was wrong https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/oisedit/adv_oisedit_dis?number=1...)

  ...And Claude, remember NOT to make NO mistakes.

Let's just use GPU's to play Dark Souls like god intended and stop this nonsense.

This is it, massive cyberattack on the USA.

Yes, of course, who wouldn't just believe random statements from the worst prepared admin in history of America.

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