Air India warned that flights to and from the United States could be delayed after the Federal Aviation Administration stopped departures nationwide on Friday, 13 November 2026, because of a communications outage. In its post on X, sent while the stop was still in force, the airline said departures from US airports were affected and that the knock-on could reach Air India services. It asked passengers to check their flight status before leaving for the airport. Its teams were watching the situation.

The stop has been lifted. Reuters, quoted by The Economic Times, said the order ended at 8:15 p.m. Eastern time. San Francisco International Airport confirmed the lift at 5:30 p.m. Pacific time and a return to normal operations. The Economic Times reports that the effects do not end with the order: airlines said getting back on schedule would take time.

United resumed operations, including some Friday-night flights, and is letting passengers change or rebook without fees or a fare difference. Delta said it was safely resuming flights. American focused on operating as many remaining Friday-evening flights as it could and is preparing a recovery over the coming days. Air Canada cancelled all flights to and from the US for the rest of Friday evening and warned that the impact would last through Saturday; services between Canada, the Caribbean and South America that cross US airspace could be affected too.

The FAA justified the decision by “extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the outage hit all 22 regional centres that direct aircraft between airports. Agency technicians are looking for the cause. Markwayne Mullin, whom the Times of India and The Economic Times call homeland security secretary, said it looked like a telecommunications outage and that there was no sign of a deliberate attack.

The Times of India, citing an airline source speaking to CNN, writes that the FAA told carriers the trouble started with network routers and is believed to have begun at Chicago Midway before spreading across the country. In the first crisis calls, the agency reportedly could not explain the outage clearly, and facilities were feeling it in different ways. The exact cause was still under investigation.

The stop blocked take-offs. Aircraft already airborne could continue and land, and those still in the air were being assessed case by case, the Times of India writes. It was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system failed. The previous order of this kind followed the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Steve Arroyo, an aviation safety expert, told The Economic Times that the outage looked like a communications failure in September at a regional centre in the Northeast, which disrupted hundreds of flights, but this time on a national scale.

Image: Wikimedia Commons — an Air India Boeing 787-8, registration VT-ANP (Anna Zvereva, CC BY-SA 2.0). The photo is not from Friday’s outage.

Sources consulted: Air India flags possible delays to US services — The Times of India; Air India warns even as the FAA lifts the ground stop — The Economic Times.