What to know about flights after the US nationwide ground stop

Officials said they expect airline schedules to fully recover by the end of the day Sunday after a nationwide ground stop that was initiated out of caution caused massive travel disruptions.

The longest flight stoppage in 25 years lasted more than four hours and ended around 8:15 p.m. ET Friday, allowing some domestic flights to take off from U.S. airports.

Of the 41,000 flights scheduled Saturday, more than 6,600 were canceled, according to FlightAware. Just over 1,300 of the more than 26,000 flights scheduled for Sunday were canceled, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm. That amounts to about 5.2% of scheduled flights. Prior to Friday, the average cancellation rate for U.S. departures was 3.4%.

But officials said the U.S. airspace was safe and operational and would recover well ahead of the Thanksgiving travel rush.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication the failure was related to a cyberattack and no lives were at risk.

Here’s what to know:

Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said the system was stable Saturday. Several thousand flights were able to fly after the ground stop, but ultimately, some 12,000 scheduled flights were unable to take off Friday, he said.

Officials acknowledged the disruption but said safety was paramount.

Bedford offered an apology for stranded travelers and thanked air traffic controllers, pilots and flight attendants for managing the fallout. He said officials were confident the system is operating safely or else they would keep airplanes on the ground.

American Airlines said in a statement Saturday night that some individual flights might still be canceled as it continued working to fully restore its operations. It urged travelers to check their flight statuses.

Airlines are obligated to offer free rebooking on another flight or a full refund if a flight is canceled.

Bedford said the administration was working closely with airlines and said they were waiving all terms and conditions.

Some airlines were allowing passengers to rebook if they had travel scheduled Friday or Saturday. Others extended the offer to people with reservations for Sunday or even Monday.

Bedford advised passengers to contact their airlines.

A contractor was replacing a section of the system’s old and discontinued copper wire with new fiber wire in a remote location Friday afternoon, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said Saturday. That kind of work has been happening across the country and across industries for decades, he said.

But on Friday, the router in that location started overloading the air traffic control system and causing intermittent disruptions to communications and radar feeds. When officials couldn’t quickly locate the cause of the overload, they grounded flights nationwide.

“We did that out of an abundance of caution,” Bedford said. “I’m sorry that we put you through this, but we did it for the right reasons.”

Officials stressed that the ground stop was not the result of a system outage or nefarious activity by a foreign actor. Duffy said officials were investigating whether contractor error or a faulty router was the cause.

The air traffic control modernization 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. About 70% of copper wire has been switched to fiber already, officials said Saturday.

Microsoft said Saturday that services were fully restored after its own massive outage. There was no indication the FAA ground stop was related to the service disruption that took Microsoft services offline Thursday, according to federal officials and a company spokesperson.

Over 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft said on its website. Users reported Microsoft 365 services including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot were interrupted.

Two travelers sleep in the baggage claim area at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Chantilly, Va., Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Baggage waits for travelers to claim in at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Chantilly, Va., Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

A traveler sleeps at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Chantilly, Va., Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

A display board shows canceled flights to the U.S., in Frankfurt, Germany, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026. (Florian Wiegand/dpa via AP)

Passengers wait for their flights at George Bush Intercontinental Airport Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, in Houston after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted nationwide ground stops. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday broke his silence on the nationwide ground stop that snarled airline trave l this weekend, using the incident to push Congress on money to fully upgrade America's air traffic control system.

The Republican president has been conspicuously quiet on the ground stop since it began Friday afternoon, instead issuing statements on social media about completely different topics as frustrated passengers were left stranded at airports and his government scrambled with airlines to restore normal travel.

Trump said in a new post on his social media platform that his administration has begun upgrading that system, but that the task should not be done in “drips and drabs.” The Republican-controlled Congress approved $12.5 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration as part of the party's sweeping tax cut package last year, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has repeatedly characterized that funding as an down payment on a broader overhaul of the aging system.

“If Congress approves the desperately needed money for Air Traffic Control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently,” Trump wrote on social media Sunday. “It will be the BEST SYSTEM anywhere in the World. Much of our current air control system is 50 years old - RIDICULOUS!”

In another post, he complained about how his Democratic predecessor had maintained the FAA and the air traffic control system, accusing Joe Biden's administration of making an “old and broken system worse than when they began.”

Biden signed a massive infrastructure bill into law in the first year of his presidency, which set aside $25 billion for the FAA to improve airports and its traffic control towers, to redevelop airport terminals, to “upgrade the foundation” of the air traffic control system, according to the FAA.

Duffy was the administration’s public face on the ground stop across the Sunday news shows, pressing Congress for billions of dollars for upgrades to the air traffic control infrastructure.

In a post on the social media platform X, Duffy said contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. had secured two routers from FAA facilities in Texas and Arkansas and was conducting “deep diagnostics” on the equipment. He has said the problem began when L3Harris was replacing a section of old copper wire with new fiber wire, somehow causing the system to overload.

As for the traveling public, he told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “we have some delays in the airspace right now,” but looking to the end of the day and into Monday, “we should be running at full capacity.”

In a ground stop, airplanes and crews are taken out of position, he said, “so it takes a little bit of time for the airliners to get back … at full capacity and operation but we’re well on our way.”

Aircraft are seen at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

President Donald Trump speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)