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When the FAA stopped flights nationwide, airline takeoffs fell to about 2% of normal

At 3:54 p.m. Eastern on November 13, 2026, the FAA stopped departures nationwide. Tracked airline flights in the air fell from 2,407 at that moment to 335 by 7 p.m., against 2,991 at the same hour on a normal Friday. A few flights kept leaving, released by the FAA case by case.

  • Josh FischerFounder
Last updated
Dataset version
nov-14-2026 · Nov 14, 2026

Every airline takeoff in the U.S., the day the FAA stopped them

Each orange dot is an airline flight leaving the ground on Friday, November 13, 2026. Gray dots show the same time on a normal Friday a week earlier. Watch what happens after 3:54 p.m. Eastern. A few departures continued: the FAA released some flights case by case, including Pacific flights from San Francisco and transatlantic flights from the East Coast.

7:00a.m. ET
Nationwide ground stop
Takeoffs, Nov 13Takeoffs, normal FridayDots stay lit for 30 minutes after takeoff

Scheduled passenger and cargo airline departures from airports in the contiguous U.S., 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern, from ADS-B tracking. Some departures from airports with thin receiver coverage are estimated, and rural airports may still be undercounted. Contains information from adsb.lol, which is made available here under the Open Database License (ODbL). The derived data and the code that built this page are at github.com/BirdyFoot/faa-ground-stop-2026. Airports: OurAirports. State outlines: U.S. Census Bureau via us-atlas. Analysis: BirdyFoot Security.

Download the data (.zip) View on GitHub (opens in a new tab)

On Friday, November 13, 2026, the FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop at 3:54 p.m. Eastern. We wanted to see what that looked like from the sky, so we used open flight-tracking data to count every airline takeoff in the contiguous U.S. that day and set it against a normal Friday a week earlier.

What we found

  • Takeoffs nearly stopped. From 4 to 7 p.m. Eastern we tracked 84 airline takeoffs, compared with 4,080 on November 6, about 2% of a normal afternoon.
  • The sky emptied within hours. Airline flights in the air fell from 2,407 when the stop began to 335 by 7 p.m. On a normal Friday there were 2,991 in the air at 7 p.m.
  • Some departures continued. The FAA released some flights case by case, including Pacific flights from San Francisco and transatlantic flights from the East Coast.

Press play on the map to watch it happen, and switch on the normal Friday to compare.

About the data

The counts come from ADS-B signals that volunteers receive and share through adsb.lol. They show tracked flights, not official totals, so rural areas may be undercounted. The full method, the code, and the data are in the download below.

Data and method

Source
adsb.lol open historical ADS-B data; airports from OurAirports
Date range
November 13, 2026, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern, compared with Friday, November 6
Dataset version
nov-14-2026 · Nov 14, 2026
License and credit
Contains information from adsb.lol, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. The derived data is shared under the same license. Analysis: BirdyFoot Security.

Caveats

  • Counts are tracked flights, not official totals. Receiver coverage is volunteer-run and thinner in rural and mountain areas.
  • "Airline" means a callsign from a list of scheduled passenger and cargo carriers. Private jets, flight schools, and military flights are excluded.
  • About 2% of takeoffs are estimated, where an aircraft first appears climbing near an airport with no receiver nearby.
  • The airborne count uses a rectangle around the lower 48, which includes some border airspace.
  • The baseline is a single day, Friday, November 6. The charts cover 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern.

Download the data · Code and data on GitHub (opens in a new tab)

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