Nov 13, 2026 · Status as of roughly 8 p.m. ET Friday. This story is moving fast.
TORONTO, November 13, 2026 —Picture it: a Friday afternoon in mid-November, gate agents reaching for that second coffee, and then, just before 4 p.m. Eastern, a message lands that nobody in aviation or travel, for that matter, ever wants to see. Every airport in the United States. Ground stopped. Until further notice. 9/11 eerily comes to mind.
Not a snowstorm. Not a single compromised runway. Something stranger, something you can’t see from the departure lounge window. And yes, it’s reaching all the way to the Toronto shoreline.
What the FAA is saying
The Federal Aviation Administration’s advisory was short and very serious: all departing traffic is held “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” with incoming international flights handled case by case.
The culprit, so far, is a communications failure. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the problem has hit the Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the 22 regional hubs that guide planes at cruising altitude between airports. The FAA is calling it “a temporary telecommunications outage” and says every flight is accounted for. Airlines are reportedly being told the trouble traces back to network routers.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says there’s no sign of a “nefarious attack,” though officials aren’t ruling anything out yet. Important to note: planes already in the air are being allowed to continue and land.
Wait, isn’t Microsoft down too?
It does feel like a plot twist. Since Thursday afternoon, a huge Microsoft 365 outage has been knocking out Outlook, Teams and Copilot (no pun intended) for users around the world, and it was still dragging into a second day when America’s air traffic radios started acting up. Two giant communication meltdowns, back to back? Cue the side-eye.
So far, though, everyone involved says it’s a coincidence. Microsoft says it has no indication the ground stop is related to its own disruption. Mullin calls them “separate issues” and says he doesn’t see any reason to connect the two. The causes on paper look different, too: Microsoft has pointed to a network change and an overloaded connection process, while the FAA is talking about a telecom failure. Even the company behind the FAA’s new AI air traffic tool has jumped in to say it wasn’t them.
That said, nobody has published a final explanation yet. Until the investigators do, the honest answer is: officially unrelated, and still under investigation.
How rare is this?
Very. The last nationwide ground stop came in January 2023, when a corrupted FAA pilot-alert system froze departures for a couple of hours. Before that, you have to go back to September 11, 2001.
The numbers keep climbing. As of 7:30 p.m., flight trackers were showing more than 10,000 US-related delays and over 4,200 cancellations, and those totals are still growing. Some US airports, like Reagan National in Washington, have literally run out of room to park planes.
“So when do we fly again?”
This is the part nobody can answer yet. Officials still have no timeline. The FAA says the stop remains in place, but flights will be let go bit by bit “as enroute facilities recover.” A handful of Pacific-bound flights from the West Coast, Hawaii and Alaska have already been cleared, and US reports suggest the stop could run until at least 11 p.m. tonight.
Even after the all-clear, expect a messy weekend. Once crews hit their legal duty limits, cancellations pile on top of each other, and United and JetBlue have already scrapped most of tonight’s remaining flights.
What it means at Pearson
The US departures area at Toronto Pearson has gone very quiet, very fast. The Greater Toronto Airports Authority says there are no scheduled US-bound departures or arrivals for now. Pearson’s own flight board shows roughly 50 departures to the US cancelled, plus 59 US arrivals that won’t be landing as planned.
The good news: domestic and international flights that don’t cross US airspace are still going. The airport is putting extra staff in the terminals, including the US departures area, and has a plan for parking all those idle planes. Air Canada warned that some Caribbean and South America flights could also be hit, since many of those routes fly over the US.
NAV Canada, which runs Canada’s air traffic control, says its own systems are fine. It briefly slowed traffic at Pearson, Montréal-Trudeau, Calgary and Vancouver and is helping with any diverted flights.
What it means at Billy Bishop
Over on the island, the story is simpler and tougher: Air Canada and Porter have cancelled all their remaining US flights in and out of Billy Bishop for Friday. Boston, Chicago, New York and Washington will have to wait. The airport is telling passengers to check with their airline directly.
Before you head to the airport
Check before you leave the house, not when you’re stuck in traffic on the Gardiner. Here are the best places to look:
- Your airline’s app, first and always. Air Canada, Porter and WestJet post cancellations and rebooking options there before anywhere else. Turn on push notifications so the bad news (or the good news) finds you.
- The airport’s own flight board. Pearson’s live departures and arrivals are on torontopearson.com, and Billy Bishop’s are on billybishopairport.com.
- The FAA’s airport status map at nasstatus.faa.gov. It shows in real time whether US airports are still ground stopped, which is handy if you’re connecting through a US city.
- A flight tracker like FlightAware or Flightradar24. Look up where your actual plane is. If the aircraft that’s meant to fly you home is still parked in Chicago, you’re not leaving on time, whatever the departure board says.
- Social feeds. Toronto Pearson and NAV Canada are both posting updates on X as things change.
If you’re booked to the US this weekend, grab a rebooking offer early, because the good seats go fast. Hang on to receipts if you end up paying for meals or a hotel, and keep in mind that the backlog may last longer than the outage.
The sky will open again. For now, it’s a good night to be flying to Vancouver instead of Vegas.
lead photo Toronto Pearson International Airport Dec. 2020. Pilot received special permission to capture these images only because flights were grounded due to COVID. YouYube nyefamiy1 screengrab by Mark Nye
