US air travel thrown into chaos as nationwide flights grounded over 'radar instability'

US air travel thrown into chaos as nationwide flights grounded over 'radar instability'

Submitted by MEE staff on Sat, 11/14/2026 - 09:33 The FAA lifted the ground stop after more than four hours, but officials warned that flight disruptions would continue as airlines worked to restore operations A passenger walks past a plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport during a nationwide ground stop following a communications outage in Washington, DC, on 13 November 2026 (Brendan Smialowski/AFP) Off

Chaos was reported at airports across the United States on Friday after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop for departing flights following problems with radar and communications systems.

Passengers were stranded as hundreds of flights were diverted and thousands cancelled.

Officials said instability in radar systems made it unsafe to continue normal operations.  

The FAA said in a statement that communications problems had affected multiple air traffic control centres and that technicians were investigating.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the disruption began at 3.36pm EST (8.36pm GMT), when radar and communications systems at facilities across the country became unstable.

“We started to have inconsistency in the data from the radars and our communication with airplanes,” Duffy said at a White House briefing. 

He said more than 3,500 aircraft were airborne when the ground stop was imposed. Those planes were allowed to continue to their destinations and land safely.

The FAA lifted the restriction at 8.15pm, but Duffy warned that restoring normal operations would take time.

“It's going to be slow,” he said, urging passengers to check with their airlines as carriers worked to reposition aircraft and crews.

The disruption came a day after a global Microsoft outage affected services including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, disrupting government operations and businesses worldwide.

Public services disrupted

The Microsoft outage began on Thursday and continued into Friday. Outage-tracking website Downdetector recorded nearly 130,000 reports of problems accessing Outlook shortly after 1pm on Thursday.

Microsoft attributed the outage to a technical problem with its infrastructure and said there was no indication of malicious activity or a cyberattack.

The outage disrupted public services in Britain, where a judge halted a trial in Manchester and sent jurors home because of delays.

British police said they were unable to receive crime reports online and urged people to call in urgent requests. 

The National Pharmacy Association also warned of delays in obtaining medication, as disruption to National Health Service systems threatened to prevent doctors from emailing prescriptions to pharmacies. 

In the US, the outage affected some law enforcement services. Colorado’s Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office said online bond payments had been disrupted.

“We know our customers rely on our services to get important work done every day, and regret the impact these outages had on those who depend on us,” Microsoft wrote in a social media update.

However, officials said the Microsoft outage was unrelated to the nationwide flight disruption, while the company said it had no indication of a connection.

“Microsoft has no indication that the FAA nationwide ground stop is related to the recent service disruption,” a company spokesperson said.

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