The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a rare nationwide ground stop for all airports Friday -- a more than four-hour disruption that snarled travel from coast to coast with canceled flights and stranded passengers.
The ground stop on Friday was the result of faulty equipment, Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said at a press conference Saturday.
"We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related," Bedford said.
More than 14,000 flights were canceled on Friday and Saturday.
Bedford said he expected the system will be fully recovered by the end of the weekend.
"Based on everything that we’re hearing from our airline partners, they believe that they’ll be able to have full schedule integrity by the close of business on Sunday," he said.
Nearly 2,300 flights in the U.S. have been cancelled Sunday in the aftermath of Friday's nationwide ground stop.
FlightAware reported 2,291 total flight cancellations as of 3 p.m. ET Sunday. That's up from just over 1,600 cancelled flights reported late Sunday morning, as airlines work to recover their operations.
Travelers move through Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Nov. 14, 2026, in Dallas, Texas.
Justin Hamel/Getty Images
Additionally, some 18,689 flights were delayed, per FlightAware. American Airlines had the most flights reported cancelled, with 611, followed by JetBlue with 253 and SkyWest with 207.
Total cancellations reported for Monday stood at 144 as of Sunday afternoon, according to FlightAware, with 641 delayed.
2 hours and 18 minutes ago
Manufacturer says routers ‘functioned as configured to by the installer’ when outage occurred
A spokesperson for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which owns Juniper, the company that manufactured the routers believed to be central to the ground stop, said in a statement to ABC News that the devices were working properly Friday, when the ground stop occurred.
"Based on what we know today, the device functioned as it was configured to by the installer. It did not fail or act improperly," the statement said.
A L3Harris production facility is shown in Huntsville, Alabama, Aug 4, 2025.
Business Wire via AP, FILE
The routers are now being examined at an L3Harris lab in Florida. L3 Harris is a government contractor that provides technology and IT support for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and that worked with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper to install the routers.
"We have that router in the L3 Harris lab down in Florida," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told co-anchor Martha Raddatz on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, referring to the specific router in Arkansas that officials believe caused instability in the air traffic communication system Friday afternoon.
"We are supporting the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the Nov. 13 ground stop of our nation’s air travel. L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously," L3Harris said in a statement Saturday.
-ABC News Ayesha Ali
12:20 PM EST
Over 1,600 flights cancelled Sunday
More than 1,600 flights have been cancelled Sunday as airlines work to recover their operations following Friday's ground stop.
Some 1,627 flights have been cancelled as of late Sunday morning, per FlightAware. According to Cirium, an aviation analytics company, roughly 5% of flights in the U.S. are cancelled Sunday.
American and JetBlue are being hit harder than the others. American has cancelled 472 flights Sunday -- about 13% of their operation -- while JetBlue has cancelled 251 flights, or roughly 27% of their operation.
Airplanes are parked on the tarmac after the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a national ground stop "due to extraordinary circumstances and reasons for safety" following the agency's earlier report of serious air traffic control communications issues at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, Nov. 13, 2026.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
More than 17,500 flights were cancelled Friday and Saturday. Only 30 Monday flights had been cancelled as of late Sunday morning.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that “we’re going to see things come back to normal today, but probably fully normal tomorrow.”
-ABC News' Clara McMichael
11:08 AM EST
ATC routers' ability to broadcast data turned off, being investigated, Duffy says
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday that air traffic control routers' ability to broadcast data has been turned off as officials continue to investigate the router communication issue that prompted a nationwide ground stop Friday.
"We have that router in the L3 Harris lab down in Florida," Duffy told co-anchor Martha Raddatz on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, referring to the specific router in Arkansas that officials believe caused instability in the air traffic communication system Friday afternoon. L3 Harris is a government contractor that provides technology and IT support for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appears on ABC's "This Week."
ABC News
"Our FAA team is on site as well. We've been partnering with the FBI and other law enforcement. We're going to take a look at what happened there," he continued. "But what we've now done, we have 69 of these routers in the national airspace. We've stopped their ability to broadcast, and it was this router was broadcasting data from this this radio facility into the whole network. Once we shut the shut the ability to broadcast down on the routers, the issue is resolved. So we're going to take a hard look at it."
Duffy explained that work was being done to replace outdated copper wire with fiber cables in El Dorado, Arkansas. When the router in that area was turned on, "we saw that in Amarillo, Texas, a system we had replaced about three weeks earlier, that started to flood our system as well."
"So we're looking at those two issues and trying to find the root cause of what happened," Duffy said.
