FAA Halts All U.S. Departures, Including at Logan, Until Further Notice

Update, 4:45 p.m. ET: The FAA’s national airspace status page no longer listed the nationwide ground stop. The Command Center page for advisory 111 returned “NO Advisory.” This newsroom could not find a public advisory or official statement that stated a lift time. A separate FAA operations summary, last updated at 4:48 p.m. Eastern, still listed a nationwide ground stop for all airports, citing an equipment outage.

The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Nov. 13, directing all departing flights at U.S. airports, including Boston Logan International Airport, to remain on the ground until further notice.

The Air Traffic Control System Command Center’s advisory, number 111, said the order was “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” It told all aircraft operators that “all airports are ground stopped” and that “all departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice.” Inbound international flights, the same advisory said, “will be managed on a case by case basis.”

The FAA’s national airspace status page no longer listed the nationwide ground stop as of 4:45 p.m. Eastern. The Command Center’s page for advisory 111 then returned “NO Advisory,” and a search of the Command Center advisories database for Nov. 13 returned no matching advisories. This newsroom could not find a public advisory or an official FAA or Transportation Department statement that stated a lift time. A separate FAA operations summary page, last updated at 4:48 p.m. Eastern, still listed a nationwide ground stop for all airports, citing an equipment outage and pointing to advisory 111. The facts in this report are as of those checks. The situation can change quickly, and travelers should confirm their flights with their airline.

What the FAA ordered, and when it is scheduled to run

The official text, signed at 20:54 Zulu, or 3:54 p.m. Eastern, lists an event time from 3:53 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern and an effective period from 3:54 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Eastern. Those end times are the window written on the advisory, not a promise that flights will resume then. The order itself says departing traffic should stay stopped until further notice.

A nationwide halt of departures is rare. NBC News, which first flagged the story for this newsroom, noted that the FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and directed airborne civilian planes to land at the nearest available airports. Friday’s advisory does not include a comparable order for planes already in the air. It addresses departing traffic and inbound international flights.

The next widely cited nationwide stop came on Jan. 11, 2023, when the FAA halted flights after a failure in the Notice to Air Missions system, a pilot-alert network. NBC News and CNBC both pointed to that outage as the most recent comparison before Friday.

Logan was already on a delay program before the nationwide order

The nationwide ground stop applies to Logan in the same way it applies to every other U.S. airport. It arrived on a day when Logan already had a separate, earlier restriction on the books.

The FAA’s National Airspace System status feed, checked at 4:28 p.m. Eastern, still listed a ground delay program at Logan for “airport volume,” with an average delay of 26 minutes and a maximum of 103 minutes, running from 1 p.m. to 9:59 p.m. Eastern. That program began hours before the national order and is not, by itself, a ground stop. A ground delay program meters departures with later takeoff times; a ground stop holds them.

The agency’s daily air traffic report, posted earlier Friday, had already warned that gusty wind and low clouds “may delay flights in Boston (BOS)” as well as in the New York area, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and San Francisco. That weather was part of the same storm system that brought cold rain to Boston and the first snow to the Worcester hills Thursday night and Friday.

FlightAware, at about 4:30 p.m. Eastern, said Logan was seeing average departure delays of 37 minutes, and that those delays were increasing. That observed average is 11 minutes higher than the FAA volume program’s 26-minute average, a TBR calculation from those two official and FlightAware figures, though the two sources measure delay in different ways and should not be treated as the same statistic.

Earlier Friday afternoon, before the national order, the Command Center also issued ground stops for Chicago O’Hare and Chicago Midway because of an equipment outage. The O’Hare advisory, number 107, said the stop ran from 3:10 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern and included departures from air-traffic centers across the country, including Boston Center, bound for O’Hare. Its comments line read, “COMMS ISSUES.” The Midway advisory, number 109, ran from 3:17 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern for the same listed condition. Those Chicago programs are not the same thing as the later nationwide halt of all departing flights.

The Boston Report could not locate a public statement from Massport, which operates Logan, as of 4:33 p.m. Eastern. Boston 25 News said at 4:15 p.m. that it had reached out to officials and had not heard back. Passengers flying through Logan should check their airline and Massport’s flight-status pages before going to the airport. For more Boston and Massachusetts news as the evening develops, follow official FAA and airline updates first.

Officials point to air-traffic communications problems

The national advisory itself does not name a technical cause. It cites only extraordinary circumstances and safety. The FAA’s operations summary page, however, listed the reason for the nationwide stop as “equipment / outage,” and pointed to advisory 111.

In a statement reported by Axios, the FAA said it “issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following communication issues impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” The same statement said, “FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide updates.” Air route traffic control centers handle high-altitude traffic between airports.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in a post on X around 4:20 p.m. Eastern, used slightly broader wording, according to Boston 25 News and WLKY, which quoted the post. “The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers,” Duffy said, according to those outlets. “FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them.”

Reuters reported that the national order came after the agency had earlier reported serious air-traffic control communications issues, and that the FAA had halted traffic in Chicago shortly before expanding the restriction nationwide. That sequence matches the timestamps on the O’Hare and Midway advisories and on national advisory 111.

The FAA has been replacing aging pieces of the air-traffic system, including an effort to remove floppy disks from a notice-to-airmen interface by 2028. Officials have not tied Friday’s communications problem to that particular project, and this report does not do so.

By the numbers: delays were already high when the stop began

FlightAware’s public delay board, checked about 4:30 p.m. Eastern — roughly 36 minutes after the national order took effect — showed 6,575 delays within, into or out of the United States on Friday, and 331 cancellations in the same category. Worldwide, the site listed 21,504 delays and 920 cancellations. Those Friday totals cover the entire day up to that hour, including morning and early-afternoon weather and volume programs. They should not be read as a count of flights delayed solely by the 3:54 p.m. ground stop, which had been in effect for only about half an hour when the numbers were captured.

Among 10 major airports on that board, San Francisco had the longest average departure delay, at 92 minutes. That airport was already under a separate FAA ground delay program for wind, with an average delay of 138 minutes listed through 2:59 a.m. Eastern Saturday. New York’s LaGuardia averaged 62 minutes, and Kennedy International averaged 56. Boston Logan, at 37 minutes, matched Orlando and was just behind Philadelphia’s 38 minutes in that set. If the nationwide stop remains in place into the evening window written on advisory 111, those averages, and the national cancellation total, are likely to move; the figures here are a snapshot, not a final tally.

The earlier O’Hare ground-stop advisory estimated 2,950 total delays, a 71-minute maximum and a 33-minute average for that Chicago program alone. The Midway advisory estimated 647 total delays, a 66-minute maximum and a 38-minute average. Those are Command Center estimates for the Chicago stops, not FlightAware’s later national counts.

What travelers should do now

People with evening flights to or from Logan, or connections through other U.S. airports, should check directly with their airline before leaving for the terminal. The FAA’s National Airspace System status page and the Command Center advisory list are the official sources for whether a nationwide stop is in force. The FAA’s national airspace status page no longer listed the nationwide ground stop as of 4:45 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Nov. 13, and advisory 111’s public page returned “NO Advisory.” This newsroom could not find a public Command Center advisory that formally canceled the order or stated a lift time. A separate FAA operations summary page still listed the nationwide stop as of 4:48 p.m. Eastern. Delays and earlier volume and weather programs, including Logan’s ground delay program, remained on the status page.

That status matters in Massachusetts communities well beyond East Boston, because a halt at Logan ripples into connections, inbound evening flights and the airlines’ ability to position aircraft for Saturday. This newsroom could not find an official lift time. As of 4:49 p.m. Eastern, @FAANews and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had not posted a follow-up saying the stop had been canceled. The agency had said technicians were investigating and that it would provide updates.

Sources

• FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center: Advisory 111, National Ground Stop, Nov. 13, 2026
• FAA National Airspace System Status
• FAA Command Center: Advisory 107, Chicago O’Hare ground stop, Nov. 13, 2026
• FAA Daily Air Traffic Report, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026
• FlightAware: Worldwide airport delays and airport status
• NBC News: FAA orders nationwide ground stop for all departing flights
• Axios: FAA issues nationwide ground stop due to “extraordinary circumstances”
• Boston 25 News: FAA issues nationwide ground stop amid communication issues with ATC
• WLKY: Flights grounded at airports nationwide due to ‘extraordinary circumstances’
• FlightAware: Cancellations and U.S. delay totals
• Reuters, via StreetInsider: FAA issues national ground stop
• FAA Command Center operations summary (National Airspace System Status), Nov. 13, 2026
• FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center: Advisories database selection form
• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, post on X, 4:16 p.m. Eastern, Nov. 13, 2026