Raleigh: FAA lifts nationwide ground stop; RDU delays remain

In Raleigh, the Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop Friday night, Nov. 13, 2026. Departing flights at Raleigh-Durham International Airport had been held under that order through the afternoon. No account read for this update gives a clock for a normal schedule at the airport.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. Eastern. He spoke to reporters at the White House. The Hill, in a story time-stamped 8:56 p.m. Eastern, quoted him in the briefing room: "At 8:15 tonight Eastern Time, we've opened up the airspace." That story said the session began at about 8:30 p.m. Reuters, updated at 9:48 p.m. Eastern, reported the same reopening time and quoted him: "It's going to be slow." The Hill also used "slow" for the return to ordinary traffic. Check a flight with the airline, or look at rdu.com, before leaving for the airport. This page is not an FAA notice and it is not an airport board.

After the order was lifted

A BBC live post published at 8:44 p.m. Eastern quoted Duffy on the 8:15 p.m. reopening and on the time it would take to unwind the afternoon. The post said the trouble will persist for a few days. It did not use the word "slow." The News & Observer, updated at 9:13 p.m. by Richard Stradling and Faith Wardwell, quoted the same unwind sentence: "It's going to take us some time to unwind what's happened this afternoon." The paper wrote that he put the reopening at about 8:15 p.m., and that it was not clear when flights would resume. Its headline says when RDU flights resume is unclear.

Reuters wrote that he told reporters departures would resume gradually. A separate line in that story, that airline schedules could be disrupted for days, is attributed to aviation analysts, not to him. That analyst line is not combined here with the BBC post's "few days."

The Associated Press, by Josh Funk and Will Weissert, updated its story at 7:18 p.m. Mountain time, which is 9:18 p.m. Eastern. The wire said the FAA said airplane departures can resume after the agency lifted the nationwide ground stop. The next sentence is the wire's own, not a quotation from the agency: airlines will not be able to return to normal operations immediately because so many planes and crews are out of position. The AP page opened here showed the first of those sentences. The planes-and-crews sentence is in that story as carried under the same byline on NBC Bay Area.

Reuters, the BBC post, and the News & Observer each reported that Duffy put the start of the trouble at 3:36 p.m. The alert time in the earlier NBC account, below, is 3:54 p.m. Those clocks are not merged. Reuters and the BBC post described him talking about overloaded routers. The newspaper wrote that he said "instability" in aging computer hardware caused the communication problems. The following sentence, on 22 centers and the 18,000-foot layer, is the paper's, as it was in the afternoon version.

At RDU on Friday night

The 9:13 p.m. News & Observer update cited FlightAware. As of 9 p.m., that account said, 136 flights had been delayed at RDU and 108 had been canceled, some of them before the nationwide order. The paper also said a United flight from the Dominican Republic, bound for Newark, was diverted to RDU and landed about 7:15 p.m. It said an Air France departure for Paris left shortly before 8 p.m., and that Icelandair's flight to Reykjavik left a short time later. Those two departures are specific flights in that story. They are not a posted minute for the airport to get back to a regular operation, and this page does not say takeoffs at RDU are back to normal.

Travelers are pointed to rdu.com or to the carrier. That is the same instruction Kerry McComber gave in the afternoon section.

The FAA's NAS status feed, opened about 10:04 p.m. Eastern, did not list a nationwide ground stop and did not list RDU. The ground-delay programs on it were at San Diego, San Francisco, and LaGuardia. Separate airport-closure notices were on the same feed. They are not treated here as the Friday order. The missing ground-stop line is not read as proof that RDU departures were running on time.

Earlier coverage, as of 5:58 p.m.

The sections below are the first version of this file. At 5:58 p.m. Eastern, the pages read then still described the order as in effect. None of them, at that hour, said the FAA had lifted it. "No restart time" in those paragraphs means no restart time was in the accounts read then. It is not a claim that the stop was still in place after the 8:15 p.m. statements above. The 11 p.m. line remains the Associated Press description of the order from that earlier copy. It is kept as the wire's wording, not as a resume clock.

The order

NBC News reported that the alert went out at 3:54 p.m. Eastern. In that account, departing traffic was told to remain stopped until further notice, and inbound international flights were to be managed one by one. The notice, as NBC and the Associated Press reported it, cited extraordinary circumstances and reasons of safety.

The Associated Press live file, updated at 5:54 p.m. Eastern, said the halt followed communications problems at the regional centers that direct planes between airports. That file said there was no clock for a restart.

NBC's live page was updated at 5:58 p.m. Eastern and still led with the safety wording. An item stamped 5:52 p.m. Eastern quoted a post from the FAA on X. The words there were, "There has been a temporary telecommunications outage — out of an abundance of caution all flights have been halted." The same item said the post added that every flight had been accounted for, and that international flights would be handled case by case.

The News & Observer, updated at 5:49 p.m., carried those FAA lines in its own wording. It said the agency had described a short telecommunications failure, that the halt was a precaution, that every flight was accounted for, and that planes arriving from abroad would be taken one flight at a time.

What Duffy posted

NBC reported that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X at 4:16 p.m. He said the FAA had issued the order for all U.S. airports after a communication issue affecting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. He said technicians were investigating, and that updates would follow as the department had them.

The Associated Press account on WRAL says he described the problem as affecting the 22 regional centers that guide en route traffic. The News & Observer quoted the line about all of those centers, then added its own sentence that the country has 22 of them and that they handle flights above 18,000 feet. The altitude figure stays with the newspaper.

The wire copy on WRAL also says the order runs through at least 11 p.m. Eastern on Friday. The News & Observer said officials had not provided a timeline. The notice in the NBC story said departing traffic should stay stopped until further notice. Eleven p.m. is not published here as the minute departures start again.

The WRAL page showed an update stamp of 11/13/2026, 10:58:10 PM, and did not name a time zone on that line. 10:58 p.m. Coordinated Universal Time is 5:58 p.m. Eastern. This file does not rewrite the stamp.

At the airport

Spectrum News, published at 4:39 p.m. Eastern, quoted Kerry McComber, VP and chief communications officer of the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority.

"I can confirm the FAA has ordered a ground stop at RDU," McComber said. "During the ground stop, no planes may depart. Travelers should check their flight status with their airline or on rdu.com for the latest travel information."

The News & Observer's 5:49 p.m. update, by Faith Wardwell, cited a spokesperson and left out a name. That passage said no planes were departing and that incoming flights were still arriving. The paper's first sentence said flights in and out of the airport were grounded. Those two sentences are both in the update. They are not combined here.

The same story said the airport site listed nearly 100 flights set to leave through the afternoon and evening, and that it was unclear how many were affected. Nearly 100 is a schedule figure from that story. It is not a count of cancellations or delays. The paper said the airport's advice is to use the airport website or to confirm a flight with an airline.

The airport homepage, opened about 5:57 p.m. Eastern, did not include a written notice of the stop in the text retrieved here. Parking availability on that page was marked last updated today at 5:57 p.m. The homepage is not a departure board.

A separate FAA page for RDU status listed the field as "On Time" beside a NOAA weather update of 4:51 p.m. EST. That page did not mention the order. It is not read here as news that takeoffs had started again. The 5:52 p.m. social-media lines still described a halt.

What was said about a cause

The Washington Post, time-stamped 5:37 p.m. Eastern, wrote that the FAA cited a short-lived failure of telecommunications. It wrote that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of a nefarious attack. The Post said Mullin told reporters the administration is not ruling out a cyberattack, that it does not yet have evidence pointing that way, and that Duffy had briefed President Donald Trump. Those sentences are his comments as the Post reported them.

ABC11, last updated at 5:39 p.m. Eastern, quoted him that there was no indication yet the incident "was a nefarious attack against us," and that "It's just a telecommunications outage as of now." In that account he also said, "This isn't another 9/11."

The Associated Press, on the WRAL page, used a shorter quotation from the same secretary and called the event a telecommunications outage. The same file said he told reporters outside the White House that this "was a telecommunication outage," that the president had been briefed, and that there was no clear information on how long the stoppage might last. Asked about a Microsoft disruption on Thursday, he said officials were not ruling anything out, the wire reported. NBC quoted a separate line, that officials "are not ruling out anything at this point" on the cause. This site does not choose a cause from those remarks.

The Associated Press called Friday the first nationwide stop of this kind since January 2023, when an FAA computer system malfunctioned. It said the earlier case was after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ABC11 credited the Associated Press for the 2023 comparison.

What the 5:58 p.m. accounts left out

None of the pages used for that first version named the equipment, the company, or the place where communications failed. None of them gave a number of RDU cancellations or a number of RDU delays. None of them gave a minute when RDU departures would be released. The 9:13 p.m. News & Observer snapshot is above. Mullin's afternoon comments, as the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and NBC reported them then, do not establish that an attack happened, and they do not establish that one did not.

A later briefing added more of his remarks, and they are still not a finding. Reuters reported that he said there was "zero evidence" so far of a cyberattack or a rogue AI system, that the outage appeared mechanically driven, and that investigators were still looking. The same Reuters account said neither possibility had been ruled out. The BBC live blog said he told the room there was no evidence of a cyberattack or a link to Thursday's Microsoft outage, and it quoted him that "no one was ever at risk." The News & Observer quoted him: "All your loved ones are safe." Those night remarks are not turned into a cause on this page.

More Wake County reporting is on the county page. Delay notes are on the traffic page.

Triangle Local is not the FAA or the airport. If someone is in danger, call 911.

Photos

Text-only. No photograph from the airport or from a news outlet is used.