Nationwide ground stopsChecked 15 November 2026

The FAA has halted every US departure three times, starting with 9/11

Jeremy CabralGrowth advisor Checked

The FAA has stopped every departure in the United States three times: on 11 September 2001, on 11 January 2023 and on 13 November 2026. 5 23 The November 2026 stop ran 4 hours 21 minutes. No nationwide stop between 2001 and 2023 turned up in any source.

Three nationwide stops in 25 years, two of them since 2023

3Nationwide FAA ground stops: 11 September 2001, 11 January 2023 and 13 November 2026 513 November was the second since 2001
9:25amET on 11 September 2001, when the FAA stopped all departuresAbout 4,500 aircraft were landed, as reported by the 9/11 Commission Report and the FAA 1
About 90 minThe 11 January 2023 NOTAM stop, from about 7:30 to 9am ET 3 4Departures began resuming at some airports from about 8:30am
4h 21mThe 13 November 2026 stop, 3:54pm to 8:15pm ET 5About three times as long as January 2023
15Times one US airline has stopped its whole network since January 202216 counting Southwest's brief pause in April 2022. All were IT failures
8 hoursThe longest of them, Alaska Airlines on 23 October 2025About 400 flights cancelled over two days, as reported by The Register 20

The 2026 stop was the longest nationwide halt since 9/11

Length of each nationwide FAA ground stop, and of each single-airline network stop since January 2022 where a length was reported. 8 more airline stops had no reported length. 9/11 runs off the scale.

Nationwide, all airlinesOne airline
Nationwide FAA ground stops, all airlines
11 Sep 2001 9/11 1 2
about 49h, off the scale
11 Jan 2023 NOTAM outage 3 4
about 1h 30m
13 Nov 2026 telecom outage 5 6
4h 21m
One airline, whole network, since 2022
17 Apr 2024 Alaska Airlines 12
1h
24 Dec 2024 American Airlines 15
1h
30 Jan 2025 Frontier Airlines 16
21m
20 Jul 2025 Alaska Airlines 17
3h
24 Sep 2025 United Airlines 19
33m
23 Oct 2025 Alaska Airlines 20
8h
10 Mar 2026 JetBlue 21
55m
28 Jul 2026 American Airlines 22
48m

9/11 Commission Report and FAA; CBS News, NPR and Fox Weather; Wikipedia, CBS News and Al Jazeera; airline stops as reported by the outlets cited.

9/11 closed US airspace for about two days and Reagan National for 23

The FAA's command centre stopped all departures at 9:25am ET on 11 September 2001, then ordered every aircraft in US airspace to land. Commercial and private traffic was clear by about 12:15pm ET, as reported by Fox Television Stations. 32 Airspace reopened for limited commercial flights on 13 September. Reagan National stayed shut until 4 October, reopening at about a quarter of its schedule, as reported by FlightGlobal. 33

Canada took 224 diverted passenger flights carrying more than 33,000 people, as reported in Transport Canada's archived chronology. 34 An archived Bureau of Transportation Statistics release, read reported elsewhere, put cancellations at about 20% of US airline flights in September 2001. 35

On 11 January 2023 a contractor deleted files while syncing the NOTAM database, and the FAA stopped departures for about 90 minutes. 4 On 13 November 2026 telecommunications trouble across FAA en route centres, after router work on its network, stopped departures for 4 hours 21 minutes. 5

Single-airline stops are far more common than nationwide ones

Every nationwide stop and every single-airline network stop in the record. Filter by scope or period. The search before 2022 was less complete, so gaps before then don't mean nothing happened.

DateEventScopePeriodStop lengthCancelled that dayCauseSource
11 Sep 20019/11 ground stop and airspace closureNationwide, all airlinesBefore 2022about 49h (estimate)no count publishedSecurity1 2
11 Jan 2023FAA NOTAM outageNationwide, all airlinesSince 2022about 1h 30mabout 1,300FAA system3 4
13 Nov 2026FAA telecom outageNationwide, all airlinesSince 20224h 21mabout 9,200FAA system5 6
7 Feb 2022Frontier Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 2022not reportedAirline IT7
14 Feb 2022Spirit Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 2022not reportedAirline IT8
2 Apr 2022Southwest technology pause (brief pause, no FAA advisory found)One airlineSince 2022not reportedAirline IT9
18 Apr 2023Southwest network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 2022not reportedAirline IT10
5 Sep 2023United network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 2022not reportedAirline IT11
17 Apr 2024Alaska Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 20221hAirline IT12
18 Jul 2024Frontier Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 2022not reported131Airline IT13
19 Jul 2024CrowdStrike outageSeveral airlinesSince 2022not reportedabout 3,400 (all US airlines)Vendor software24
22 Sep 2024Alaska Airlines system-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 2022not reported5Airline IT14
24 Dec 2024American Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 20221hAirline IT15
30 Jan 2025Frontier Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 202221mAirline IT16
20 Jul 2025Alaska Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 20223h150Airline IT17
6 Aug 2025United Airlines ground stop (Unimatic)One airlineSince 2022not reported218Airline IT18
24 Sep 2025United Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 202233m14Airline IT19
23 Oct 2025Alaska Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 20228h400Airline IT20
10 Mar 2026JetBlue network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 202255mAirline IT21
28 Jul 2026American Airlines network-wide ground stopOne airlineSince 202248mAirline IT22
28 Aug 2012United SHARES reservation system outageOne airlineBefore 2022about 2hAirline IT25
16 Apr 2013American Airlines reservation system failure and nationwide ground stopOne airlineBefore 2022not reportedabout 1,000Airline IT26
2 Jun 2015United dispatch system ground stopOne airlineBefore 2022about 50mAirline IT27
8 Jul 2015United router failure nationwide ground stopOne airlineBefore 2022about 1h 40mabout 60Airline IT28
20 Jul 2016Southwest router failure and IT outageOne airlineBefore 2022not reportedAirline IT29
8 Aug 2016Delta Atlanta data centre power failureOne airlineBefore 2022about 5habout 1,000Airline IT30
29 Jan 2017Delta domestic IT outage and ground stopOne airlineBefore 2022about 2h 30mabout 170Airline IT31

Every chart here can be embedded, downloaded and cited

Each chart has Embed, CSV and PNG buttons, and every figure links to its source. Credit FlightCancellations.com and link to the page.

The counts here depend on who counted and when

  • A nationwide ground stop here means an FAA order holding departures for all carriers across the country. Regional stops, single-airport stops and ground delay programmes are excluded.
  • Single-airline stops since January 2022 come from a list built to one written rule: the airline halted all departures network-wide, confirmed by an FAA advisory or the airline's own statement, after a named non-weather failure. That rule gives 15 such stops, and 16 with Southwest's brief pause of 2 April 2022, which had no FAA advisory. CrowdStrike, which stopped Delta, United and American on one morning, is counted separately as a vendor failure.
  • Stops before 2022 come from a less systematic search. Never read them as a count per year, and never compare years across the whole record.
  • The 9/11 closure length of about 49 hours is an estimate from the 9:45am ET order to land all aircraft to the limited reopening at about 11am ET on 13 September. The 4,500 aircraft figure is reported by the 9/11 Commission Report and the FAA. It is described both as aircraft airborne and as aircraft landed.
  • Most single-airline stop lengths and counts are reported elsewhere: reported by the news outlet cited, without an FAA record opened. The Alaska figures come from The Register and Skift.
  • About 9,200 is FlightAware's end-of-day count of US cancellations on 13 November (9,159). Other counts that day ranged from more than 4,700 (Flightradar24) to nearly 8,000 (CBS and the BBC), and the Wall Street Journal reported nearly 6,000. 36

Full data for this page: Nationwide and single-airline ground stops (CSV). Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a credit and a link.

Sources

36 sources
  1. 19/11 Commission Report Reported elsewhere
  2. 2FAA, Looking Back on 9/11 Reported elsewhere
  3. 3CBS News Reported elsewhere
  4. 4Wikipedia, 2023 FAA system outage Checked at source
  5. 5Wikipedia, 2026 FAA nationwide ground stop Checked at source
  6. 6CBS News citing FlightAware Checked at source
  7. 7The Points Guy Reported elsewhere
  8. 8Reuters via KFGO Reported elsewhere
  9. 9The Points Guy Checked at source
  10. 10PBS NewsHour (AP) Reported elsewhere
  11. 11CBS News Miami Reported elsewhere
  12. 12WDBJ7 (AP) Reported elsewhere
  13. 13CNN Reported elsewhere
  14. 14AirlineGeeks Reported elsewhere
  15. 15NBC Chicago Reported elsewhere
  16. 16Reuters via Yahoo Checked at source
  17. 17WBTV (AP) Reported elsewhere
  18. 18FlightGlobal Reported elsewhere
  19. 19CBS News Reported elsewhere
  20. 20The Register Reported elsewhere
  21. 21The Register Reported elsewhere
  22. 22ABC7 New York Checked at source
  23. 23Fox Weather Checked at source
  24. 24CNBC via NBC DFW Checked at source
  25. 25FlightAware Reported elsewhere
  26. 26Motley Fool (AP) Checked at source
  27. 27Fortune Reported elsewhere
  28. 28NPR Reported elsewhere
  29. 29The Daily Record (AP) Checked at source
  30. 30KSL (CNNMoney) Checked at source
  31. 31Aviation Week Reported elsewhere
  32. 32Fox Television Stations Reported elsewhere
  33. 33FlightGlobal Reported elsewhere
  34. 34Transport Canada archived chronology Reported elsewhere
  35. 35BTS press release, 4 Dec 2001 (archived) Reported elsewhere
  36. 36FlightAware via Upgraded Points Checked at source

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