A nationwide FAA ground stop on Nov. 13, 2026, idled nearly 7,000 flights and exposed a rift between the Trump administration and its predecessor over aviation safety.
The FAA lifted the order after four hours, but disruptions cascaded through the weekend. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, speaking at a Democratic conference in Denver, wasted no time attacking the administration's response.
"The system has many redundancies in it, so that normally, if there's one point of failure, something else can catch it," Buttigieg told reporters. "It is not clear to me why that redundancy did not prevent an outage of this magnitude."
Buttigieg, who had a flight scheduled for Saturday, offered a barbed olive branch, saying he would be "available in the hotel bar following the concert for anybody who needs to rebook their flights or get a refund per your rights."
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the cause remained under investigation, citing a potential contractor error or equipment failure. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin ruled out artificial intelligence or a cyberattack, instead blaming aging infrastructure.
President Trump echoed that assessment on Fox News, attributing the breakdown to the system's age. The FAA cited safety concerns and serious air traffic control communications issues as the reason for the ground stop.
The grounding was only the second nationwide FAA ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The first occurred in January 2023.
