By Claire Whitcomb
BUFFALO — Airlines spent Saturday digging out from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, a shutdown of more than four hours that canceled thousands of flights, including departures from Buffalo Niagara International Airport, and left travelers deciding whether to wait or drive.
Trump administration officials said new technology being added to the air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, The Associated Press reported. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said planes were taking off and landing again, and officials said the system should be back to normal before the Thanksgiving rush.
What the administration says happened
Duffy said the failure involved old equipment and was not linked to the Federal Aviation Administration’s new AI-powered system, which the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky. He tied the outage to the cost of replacing that equipment and said Congress has not approved enough money to finish the job.
“We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” Duffy said, according to the AP. “We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in danger, and that the more than 3,000 flights in the air when the grounding order went out landed safely, the AP reported.
The FAA has already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems under an overhaul that began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion, according to the AP. Duffy and the White House are pushing for $30 billion more to complete it.
The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when an FAA system that sends notices to pilots failed, and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Why one outage reached Buffalo
Andrew Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy, said the stoppage affected about a quarter of the 45,000 flights in the U.S. each day. “The knock-on effect of that is incredible,” he told the AP. “The aircraft doesn’t just fly from A to B and back to B and then stop. It then moves onto C and then over to E and around and around and around.”
He described the work the FAA is attempting as replacing parts of a system that never shuts down. “What you’re watching here is trying to change the tires of your car when the car’s going at 80 miles an hour down the expressway, because nothing stops in aviation,” Charlton said.
The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which runs the airport, told travelers on the airport’s website to “please check with your individual airlines for specific updates on delays, cancellations and resumed flight schedules.” At the terminal, travelers told WKBW they were frustrated and unsure when they would reach their destinations.
Jim Rivera, headed to Atlanta to see his daughter, said he would rather get a refund. “Right now, we feel like we shouldn’t be traveling. What is going on in the air and on the ground is not safe to travel at this moment,” he said. Adam Vanbrekel chose a rental car instead. “I want to get back home, and then I know I’ll guarantee I make it there rather than guessing,” he said.
Langworthy asks for answers and funding; Hochul calls for Duffy to go
Rep. Nick Langworthy, the Republican who represents New York’s 23rd District, issued a statement late Friday calling on the FAA and its contractors to explain the breakdown and backing more money for modernization.
“As chairman of the Aviation Safety Caucus, I have for years called for the modernization of our FAA infrastructure. This latest disruption underscores why we can no longer afford to put that work off,” Langworthy said. “Modernizing our air traffic control system comes at a significant cost, but the cost of continued failure is far too high.”
“We need full transparency from the FAA and its contractors about what happened, why it happened, and what other vulnerabilities could cause future disruptions,” he said. “Funding this modernization is not a partisan issue.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, put the blame on the secretary. “From chronic air traffic controller shortages to repeated communications breakdowns, serious lapses in our aviation system have become a pattern on Sean Duffy’s watch,” she said in a statement Saturday. She called for a congressional investigation and said, “Sean Duffy must resign, or President Trump must remove him immediately.”
The administration has said the outage stemmed from aging equipment that it is working to replace, and has asked Congress to fund the rest of that work.
What travelers should do
Officials said the effects could be felt for days, though they expect the system to be back to normal before Thanksgiving. Passengers flying out of Buffalo should check with their airline before leaving for the airport, as the NFTA advised.
Featured photo: Buffalo Niagara International Airport, September 2025. Photo by G. Edward Johnson via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.
Sources: The Associated Press via Buffalo Toronto Public Media, Nov. 14, 2026, including statements from Rep. Langworthy and Gov. Hochul; WKBW, Althea Castro de la Mata, Nov. 14, 2026.
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