Yesterday Microsoft had a world wide outage of its Exchange email servers, Teams and other MS products for over 12 hours.
Today there is this:
Will update this post below this graphic as more becomes known to us
A nationwide FAA ground stop that happened today (Friday, Nov 13, 2026), and it’s genuinely historic in scale.
What happened:
At 4:53 p.m. ET the FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop — all departing traffic at US airports held until further notice — citing “extraordinary circumstances” and safety concerns.
The cause was a communications problem at regional air traffic control centers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said technicians were investigating a “communication issue.” The FAA didn’t give details initially.
Planes already in the air were allowed to continue to their destinations (FlightAware was tracking ~12,000+ aircraft airborne); inbound international flights handled case-by-case.
The advisory window ran through 11 p.m. ET tonight, and at least one report says the ground stop has since been lifted and normal operations resuming.
Why it’s a big deal: this is only the third time in US aviation history a nationwide ground stop of this magnitude has been ordered. The other two:
September 11, 2001
January 2023 (the NOTAM system outage)
The graphic itself looks like a Canadian news outlet’s breaking-news card (it flags that travellers in Canada, including those connecting through US airports, could be affected). The notable angle at this hour: the FAA is being cagey about what the safety concern actually was — the stated window and Duffy’s “communication issue” line don’t fully match, which is why it’s blowing up. Worth checking the FAA’s NAS status page or a wire before bed if you want the resolution.
