A technical glitch in the US air traffic control system caused a nationwide halt to flight departures on Friday, November 13, 2026, before the suspension was lifted in the evening local time after the disruption lasted for about five hours and affected thousands of flights.
Data pressure on outdated equipment
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated in an official press release that legacy network switches and routers experienced data overload, leading to inconsistent information coming from them. He confirmed that modern IP-based network equipment did not fail, while the malfunction led to instability in radar and communication data at air traffic control centers and arrival and departure regulation facilities.
For his part, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested during a press conference at the White House that the introduction of newer equipment and technologies into the system overburdened the legacy components, while emphasizing that investigations are ongoing and no possibility is being ruled out, while ruling out a cyberattack or any connection to a Microsoft outage or the new "SMART" tool.
What changes practically?
Authorities announced the resumption of flights gradually starting at 8:15 PM Eastern Time, with official warnings that the return of flight schedules to normal will take a long time depending on the availability of pilots and cabin crews. This stoppage is the first nationwide suspension of its kind for air traffic in the United States since January 2023.
This technical failure has brought the state of airport technical infrastructure back into the spotlight, as the Transportation Secretary renewed his urgent call to allocate sufficient funding to completely modernize the air traffic control system, stressing that addressing legacy equipment issues requires replacing them with a new generation of technologies to ensure such widespread disruptions do not recur.