U.S. Flights Halted for About 5 Hours After Communications Disruption
Key Facts
The nationwide U.S. flight departure halt lasted about 5 hours on Friday, November 13, after communications and data disruptions in the air traffic control system led the Federal Aviation Administration to suspend takeoffs, according to an Associated Press report. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said “inconsistent” data from routers in the monitoring system prompted the agency to order the halt. The order was lifted Friday evening, but the resumption of flights did not end the operational disruption. Officials described the incident as the longest nationwide halt of its kind in 25 years. It was not possible to verify that the fault was attributable to a network operated by L3Harris, while officials said the problem involved communications and data disruptions across routers.
Duffy said instability appeared at 3:36 p.m. in radar and communications systems at control centers and terminal radar approach control facilities across the country. He added that routers were overloaded with data and produced inconsistent information, affecting en route air traffic control centers. The secretary said the decision followed the detection of disruption in those systems, without attributing it to any particular company. About 3,500 aircraft were in the air when the halt began, according to Duffy. The number fell to fewer than 400 aircraft in U.S. airspace by the time he gave his briefing, while flights that had already taken off continued to deal with the impact of the decision.
The disruption affected airports beyond those where departures were barred, with thousands of flights and perhaps more than a million passengers affected, according to the Associated Press estimate. At the same time, more than 3,000 flights landed safely during the disruption, the report said. Data from Cirium cited by the agency showed that at least 827 flights had been diverted by 7:05 p.m. Eastern time. A total of 670 flights were returned to their departure airports, while 157 were directed to other airports. About 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to depart U.S. airports after 4 p.m. Eastern time, broadening exposure to delays and cancellations.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there were, up to that point, no indications that the outage was a hostile attack, describing it as a “communications outage.” He said the investigation was ongoing, and officials had not ruled out all possibilities. According to the Associated Press, new technical updates being added to the air traffic control system had increased pressure on older systems and led to intermittent gaps in communications and radar. Duffy said aging infrastructure was an ongoing problem, adding that “many of our towers are approaching 100 years old.” He called on Congress to provide emergency funding to modernize the systems, describing the situation as an “emergency.”
The Federal Aviation Administration described the incident as the first nationwide halt since a major computer system outage in January 2023, while the previous nationwide halt cited in the report dates to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. On the recovery, Mullin said it could take airlines days to return to normal because aircraft and crews had been displaced from their usual locations. Officials added that they expected the system to be ready to handle the Thanksgiving travel peak. Duffy had expressed hope that flight traffic would improve the following day, while JetBlue expected disruptions to continue and additional flights to be canceled. This means that lifting the halt order allowed departures to resume, but did not return aircraft and crews to their locations or immediately end the effects of the disruption.
EL7 data recorded L3Harris Technologies shares closing at $272.35 on November 13. This data does not establish that the share movement was a response to the disruption, and it was not possible to verify the daily high or low from a reliable open source. The stock is mentioned in the context of a narrative linking the incident to the company, but officials described the fault as a communications and data disruption and did not publicly identify a company responsible. The focus of the announced developments therefore remains the impact of the air traffic control systems outage on air traffic, and the ongoing investigation into the cause of the outage. A return to full operations remains dependent on restoring aircraft and crew positions and addressing accumulated delays.