Thousands of flights canceled as airlines work to dig out from nationwide ground stop

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 2,000 flights were canceled Saturday as airlines across the U.S. worked to dig out from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, which stranded passengers and forced professional and college sports teams to scramble for alternate transportation.

Trump administration officials said new technology being added to the nation’s air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the flight shutdown of more than four hours.

A limited number of domestic flights departed after the stop was lifted around 8:15 p.m. ET. But the effects could be felt for days, with officials saying the system is likely to be operating normally in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush.

The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when another key FAA computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Emily Brown and her 14-year-old daughter waited more than four hours Friday at the Dallas airport for their flight to Columbus, Ohio, before giving up. They were traveling to surprise her daughter’s best friend. Instead, she had to settle for phoning the friend through tears in the airport, Brown said.

“She saved up her money to buy her own ticket, and she’s planned this whole weekend,” Brown said. “Now we’re not sure when we’re gonna be able to go.”

Ruth Coles was stuck on her plane for more than five hours after landing at Los Angeles International Airport from Newark, New Jersey. She said the passengers were told they were waiting for a gate to open.

“The pilot keeps saying they are telling him we are next in line,” Coles said.

At airports across the U.S., passengers stared at screens showing delays or rushed to find buses or trains to their destinations. Some passed the time by breaking out in song.

Sports teams scheduled to play this weekend adjusted game start times, searched for hotel rooms, rescheduled flights and chartered buses.

Auburn University's football team opted to take a bus to Mississippi State and the Saturday start time was pushed from noon ET to 4:15 p.m. Other universities affected by the stoppage included Baylor, Washington, Kansas State, Minnesota and No. 19 Ole Miss, which did not plan to fly until Saturday morning for its game against Oklahoma.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy encouraged NCAA football teams to reach out to the FAA so the agency can prioritize flights for Saturday games.

More than 2,500 flights were canceled in the U.S. Saturday and hundreds more were delayed, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.

Corbyn Wascher's flight was on the tarmac at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport for four hours Friday on his way home to Moline, Illinois, from a conference in Miami. Everyone was cordial on the American Airlines plane as they talked and stretched their legs and the flight attendants handed out water, pretzels and biscotti snacks, he said.

“The stewardesses were amazing. You could tell that they were pretty stressed out,” said the 37-year-old high school teacher, who took a $100 uber to a hotel 25 minutes from the airport after he was unable to find new flights. He was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon flight to Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in any danger as more than 3,000 flights were safely landed Friday.

Duffy blamed Congress for failing to approve more funding for new technology, while downplaying the fact that trying to implement new fixes overtaxed the system. He suggested more disruptions might occur.

“We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” he said. “We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these.”

Duffy said the problems were not linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky because that isn’t connected to Friday's failure.

“This is all the old legacy equipment. All of the new equipment that’s been deployed did not go down,” Duffy said.

The FAA has already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems as part of the overhaul that began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion of funding. Duffy and the White House are pushing for $30 billion more to complete the work.

The problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, although that disruption was linked to a construction crew cutting a fiber optic line. Aging equipment was also blamed for the brief radar outages last year that disrupted Newark airport.

Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said the difference this time is it happened on a nationwide scale that left controllers unable to reliably talk to pilots.

“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground and not put them in the air, where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them,” said Arroyo, a former United Airlines pilot.

Friday’s ground stop also was different from the one after 9/11 because planes were not being told to land immediately and pilots likely were able to communicate with ground controllers at airports, Arroyo said.

Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and Golden from Seattle. Associated Press journalists Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado; Jessica Hill in Las Vegas; Ali Swenson in Chicago; Alex Veiga and Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles; Seung Min Kim and Aamer Madhani in Washington; and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.

Passenger watch as workers unload luggage from a United plane as flights are delayed at Los Angeles International Airport Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Passengers wait as flights are delayed inside a terminal at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The sun sets over Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in DFW Airport, Texas, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

A passenger moves through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport as all flights are canceled or delayed, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

People wait at a terminal at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Arlington, Va., after the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

An agent helps travelers at a ticketing desk at LaGuardia Airport in New York, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

It took Alana Grant years to find the strength to set foot in the basement of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where her grandfather, the Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons, attended his final Bible study.

Her fears have been replaced by gratitude and hope now that there is a completed memorial in a courtyard by the front door for the “Emanuel Nine,” the Black churchgoers killed by an avowed white supremacist in 2015.

The memorial provides a public space where “people can go and remember really what happened here,” Alana Grant said as she and her husband, state Rep. Hamilton Grant, got their first look.

On Saturday, the long-planned memorial at the South's oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church opens to the public.

Emphasizing remembrance and reflection, the marble memorial is anchored by a Fountain of Grace, symbolizing God's eternal love and mercy. Water flows from a shallow basin etched with the names of the six women and three men slain. Two Fellowship Benches with curved backs, sheltering anyone seated, flank the fountain. There is also a Cross of Hope, signifying redemption in the wake of suffering. A garden honoring the five survivors will come next.

The Rev. Eric Manning, co-chair of the Mother Emanuel Memorial Foundation board, hopes it will mean something to everyone.

“I was actually standing out there the other day,” said Manning, who took over after pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney was among those killed. “Just for a moment, a peace came over me.”

Grant sees the memorial as a place to inspire conversations with her three small children about their great-grandfather. Because the facts of the shooting have been so public, she doesn't want them to hear more from someone else.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about it and praying about it,” she said. “I do want them to go so that they can kind of see what even brought me to South Carolina.”

Former North Carolina state senator and Charlotte City Councilman Malcolm Graham, whose sister Cynthia Graham Hurd died huddled under a desk in the fellowship hall, attended the 2023 groundbreaking. He has anticipated visiting the memorial to reflect on “all the good times Cindy and I had as kids growing up, and being at the church and going to Sunday school.”

A library, scholarship and other awards now carry the name of the accomplished librarian. Now she'll live on in the memorial, too.

“She said before she died that I was the most famous person in the family,” Graham said. “She is the most famous person in our family and I still look up to her.”

As for the survivors to be honored with a garden, Grant says their living with memories of the shooting is “nothing short of heroism.”

“There are not a lot of spaces where you get to see the survivors. We as Black people have survived so much,” Grant said.

When a committee sought an architect in 2017, they heard from designers all over the world, said John Darby, another memorial foundation co-chair who runs a Charleston real estate development firm. The final candidates were not asked to submit design proposals, but instead give written responses to deep questions on topics like forgiveness.

That unconventional request was very prescient, said Michael Arad, an architect on the 9/11 Memorial whose design was ultimately chosen. He wrote about his admiration for the victims' families who offered forgiveness to the shooter.

A white, Jewish New Yorker who had never visited South Carolina, Arad did a deep-dive into the community for more than a year after he was selected. Having lengthy conversations with members of the congregation and researching the church's 200-year history was essential, he said, and while the 9/11 memorial was a bigger endeavor, this design wasn't any less complex.

“My job as a designer was to allow people who visit the site to see and hear what was here all along,” he said. “We understand who we are as Americans through stories like this, through our response.”

Arad said he embraces emotionally weighted projects as “a tremendous privilege” and he “could not imagine turning down a project like this.”

The foundation has raised around $25 million over the last decade for the memorial, garden and other costs, much of it from foundations, endowments and corporations, Darby said.

“It was one of those things that people wanted to be a part of,” Darby said. “We don't want it to be an expense to the church.”

Established in 1818, Mother Emanuel was built by free and enslaved people. In the 20th century, the church became a place of resistance where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights figures spoke.

The Emanuel Nine's families applauded in 2015 when Gov. Nikki Haley removed the Confederate battle flag from state buildings. But with Republicans stirring an angry backlash against diversity and equity efforts, Graham said “racism, hatred and discrimination continue to be this country's Achilles' heel.”

Alana Grant has tried over the years to gather support for a hate crimes statute, and her husband is among the lawmakers who pushed legislation named for Pinckney that would add enhanced penalties for hate crimes to South Carolina's criminal code. It failed to pass, even though a senator was among the Emanuel Nine.

She sees this memorial as an opportunity to raise “generational awareness” so younger people will campaign against hate. Tourists still come to the church daily out of curiosity or sympathy, and could leave the memorial feeling inspired.

“We want more than your thoughts and prayers. We want your advocacy,” she said.

Rev. Eric Manning, co-chair of the Mother Emanuel Memorial Foundation board, is interviewed at the Emanuel Nine Memorial at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)

Jim Durham, left, and his partner, Cindy Joa, visit the Emanuel Nine Memorial at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)

The Emanuel Nine Memorial fountain is seen during a media preview at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)

The Emanuel Nine Memorial is seen during a media preview at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)

The Emanuel Nine Memorial fountain is seen during a media preview at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)