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Stranded travelers slept on floors at Columbus airport as fallout from FAA ground stop stretched into Saturday

Columbus, Ohio • November 14, 2026 • By Press Pass USA

The departures terminal at John Glenn Columbus International Airport

File photo: Columbus Regional Airport Authority / FlyColumbus.com

Travelers slept on floors and chairs in baggage claim and outside the terminals at John Glenn Columbus International Airport overnight, after a nationwide ground stop halted departing flights across the United States for more than four and a half hours on Friday — the longest shutdown of U.S. airspace since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued the nationwide ground stop at about 3:54 p.m. Eastern on Friday, citing a telecommunications issue affecting air traffic control centers, and lifted it at about 8:15 p.m. But the disruption kept rippling into Saturday morning: as of about 8:30 a.m., at least 13 departing flights and 26 arrivals at John Glenn were delayed or canceled, according to The Columbus Dispatch. On Friday alone, more than 160 delays and cancellations were reported at John Glenn and Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus.

Pianist Ingrid Jacoby told a Dispatch reporter in the baggage claim area that she had been awake for more than 30 hours. Her flight from London was canceled as she tried to check in, and she was then booked onto three more flights to Ohio — each one canceled. A fourth flight finally landed in Columbus at about 1 a.m., but the hotels near the airport were booked or charging what she called exorbitant rates: $350 for a room in the afternoon, $850 by the evening. She spent the night at the airport. She is scheduled to give a concert in Granville and return to London on Monday. "I really felt I needed to go because if I don't show up, there's no concert," she said.

Tony Venzin, who works at a pet food company and was traveling to Germany for work, waited outside the TSA checkpoint Saturday morning. When he arrived for his flight the night before, he found it was canceled. He drove back home to Logan, about an hour from the airport, and drove back the next morning — only to have that flight canceled too. "I don't think frustration gets you very far in these situations," he said. "It's like, it is what it is. I'm just thankful I can drive home. ... I feel bad for the folks [who don't live here.]"

Some travelers caught a break. Tiffany Kroeger had watched the news Friday with anxiety, fearing a trip to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun she had looked forward to for a year might be affected. By Saturday morning, her flight was set to depart on time — though she said she would stay nervous until takeoff. "I think I'll believe it when I see it," she said.

A spokesperson for the Columbus Regional Airport Authority confirmed Friday night that the ground stop had been lifted and advised passengers with flights departing or arriving in Columbus to check with their airlines about flight status.

Nationally, the toll was enormous. More than 6,000 flights were canceled and more than 9,000 delayed on Friday, and on Saturday airlines canceled more than 4,000 additional U.S. flights, according to Reuters, as planes and crews sat out of place for their next flights. Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said he expected a "full recovery" by Sunday.

At a news conference Saturday morning, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the outage began during routine maintenance at a remote FAA facility, where contractor L3Harris was replacing old copper telecommunications lines with fiber-optic service. Investigators have not yet determined the exact cause — whether it was user or installer error by L3Harris, or a faulty router. Duffy said the work flooded the FAA's routers with data, with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, disrupting communications with airplanes and radar. "We're going to hold people accountable," Duffy said. L3Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Officials said there was no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious activity. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday there was "zero evidence" so far that the outage resulted from a cyberattack, and Duffy repeated Saturday that investigators saw "zero evidence of anything nefarious" and nothing AI-related.

Sources: The Columbus Dispatch, "Stranded travelers sleep on floors at Columbus airport after FAA halt" (Nov. 14, 2026) and "More than 160 cancellations, delays in Columbus from FAA's now-lifted ground stop" (Nov. 13, 2026); Reuters, "Thousands of US flights canceled, delayed as air travel system recovers from shutdown" (Nov. 14, 2026); The Wall Street Journal, "Air-Travel Outage Linked to Contractor Replacing Copper Wire" (Nov. 14, 2026); USA Today, "FAA says it has lifted nationwide ground stop that snarled airports" (Nov. 13, 2026); Fox Weather, "FAA expects 'full recovery' by Sunday" (Nov. 14, 2026).