Photos show trouble at airports nationwide as FAA grounds all flights

Photos show trouble at airports nationwide as FAA grounds all flights A passenger walks past a board displaying delayed flights at JFK International in New York City after the FAA issued a national ground stop "due to extraordinary circumstances and reasons for safety" on Friday. Angelina Katsanis/Reuters It's a bad time to be traveling.Passengers are being deplaned, and flights are delayed after the FAA grounded every flight nationwide because of what it called "extraordinary circumstances."Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the ground stop was ordered because of a "communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.""FAA technicians are investigating the issue," Duffy wrote in a post on X.As the ground stop became a multi-hour ordeal, passengers have begun to crowd boarding areas, have been asked to leave flights, and are scrambling to find their luggage. 'All flights have been halted' Passengers wait at McGhee Tyson Airport after the FAA issued a ground stop for all flights across the U.S. on Nov. 13. Adam Sparks/News Sentinel/Reuters Boarding areas began to fill up at airports across the country.On Friday afternoon, the FAA said in a post on X that there has been a temporary telecommunications outage."Out of an abundance of caution, all flights have been halted," said the FAA. "Every flight has been accounted for and international flights will be handled on a case by case basis." The exact cause remains unclear A person stands in front of a departures board at Logan International Airport. Brian Snyder/Reuters Flight boards are flashing red and orange across all major airports. Transportation officials have not yet said why they issued the ground stop. The FAA is prepared to make a system update Passengers wait inside the main terminal, following the agency's earlier report of serious air traffic control communications issues at Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Virginia, US, November 13, 2026. Daniel Heuer/Reuters In some airports, stranded passengers are congregating in terminals as security check lines grow longer.In June, Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford announced that the agency awarded a contract to Air Space Intelligence for two technologies said to improve how flights are scheduled and managed across the national airspace system.The new system, named SMART, runs on Air Space Intelligence's National Airspace System, which uses "the AI that models the entire system, from the airline operation to air traffic control, and clears the bottlenecks before delays cascade."Air Space Intelligence said in an X post that the new system was not the cause of the communications problem that prompted the ground stop. lines are growing in many airports Lines are forming at the Salt Lake City airport after passengers were told to disembark a flight to Chicago. Jon Lett Jon Lett, a passenger who was traveling from the Salt Lake City Airport to Chicago, told Business Insider that everyone on his flight has been told to disembark and wait.Lett said that, though the mood among passengers remains "chill," there is no telling whether his flight will be able to depart anytime soon. Planes are parked on the tarmac Planes wait on the tarmac at Chicago O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, on November 13, 2026. KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP via Getty Images Photos show planes parked back-to-back at Chicago O'Hare International Airport.National ground stops are historically rare for the FAA.In January 2023, the FAA halted flights because of an outage involving its pilot alert system. Before that, nationwide air traffic was halted following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Traffic outside the airports also began to pile up Traffic piles up outside a terminal at Dulles International in Virginia after the FAA issued a national ground stop "due to extraordinary circumstances and reasons for safety" on Friday. Daniel Heuer/Reuters Traffic outside airports began to pile up as the nationwide ground stop became a multi-hour emergency. Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Katherine Li is a reporter on Business Insider's West Coast business news team. She covers career, the future of work, and how AI is changing hiring practices and workplace trends.Previously, she was a newsroom fellow who wrote international breaking news and produced newsletters for Semafor. Before that, she wrote about climate policies for The Lever, covered the AAPI community for the SF Chronicle as a freelancer, and wrote about the 2019 Hong Kong protests as an intern for The New York Times.She is an alumna of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and a graduate of the international journalism program at Hong Kong Baptist University with minors in French and English literature. Email Katherine at katherineli@insider.com and follow her on Bluesky @katherineli.bsky.social. Paul is Deputy Editor of Homepage and Programming at Business Insider. He previously served as News Editor for the New York Post's digital team and was the News Editor at Digital Trends. He began his career as a local editor for Patch.com and spent several years as a senior staff writer for the Times Review Media Group on Long Island in New York, where his feature stories, investigative pieces, and news articles won numerous awards. Paul graduated from Boston University with a degree in journalism. FAA air travel Travel More Aviation Airports Airlines