FAA Ground Stop Ends, but 10,000 US Flights Delayed

The United States grounded every departing flight for several hours on Friday evening after the computer systems coordinating its airspace failed, in the longest nationwide stoppage in 25 years. The order was lifted early on Saturday, but airlines were still cancelling and delaying flights into the weekend, including services to and from Amsterdam.

KLM said 11 of its overnight flights from the United States to Amsterdam were disrupted. United, Delta and American Airlines, which all serve Schiphol, were also hit, and Schiphol warned that departures to the US were running several hours late after Eurocontrol halted European flights at the FAA's request.

How a router failure grounded a country

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said ageing switches and routers at the Federal Aviation Administration were overwhelmed by the volume of data passing through them. "They started delivering inconsistent information, and therefore we shut the system down," he said at the White House.

The failure produced intermittent communications and irregular radar data, according to NL Times. The FAA cited "extraordinary circumstances and safety reasons" for the ground stop, which affected the regional air traffic control centres that manage flights between airports. Aircraft already in the air were generally allowed to continue, and incoming international flights were handled case by case.

"They started delivering inconsistent information, and therefore we shut the system down," US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, according to NL Times.

The scale is hard to overstate. FlightRadar24 counted more than 4,700 cancelled flights and about 10,000 delayed to, from and within the United States by early Saturday, with another 700 cancellations already logged for the day. Business Insider reported that nearly 9,500 flights were halted at the height of the stoppage, and officials said tens of thousands of passengers were stranded, many of them overnight at airports.

Schiphol: 11 KLM flights and hours of delays

For Dutch travellers the disruption arrived with little warning. One passenger at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport told De Telegraaf there was "a lot of uncertainty": staff appeared unaware of the situation while travellers had already seen it on the news, and KLM's app still showed flights as on time.

Schiphol is one of the busiest transfer points between Europe and the US, and the timing was brutal: Friday night departures feed Saturday connections across the continent. Airlines are obliged under EU rules to offer rebooking or refunds for cancelled flights, but the backlog means the practical answer for most passengers is to check the app and allow extra hours at the airport.

A White House briefing with few answers

Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called the shutdown a national emergency, then spent much of a briefing blaming the Republican-controlled Congress and praising President Donald Trump, according to The Advocate. The cause was not fully resolved, and the secretaries offered shifting explanations, leaving travellers and airlines with little clarity about what failed and why.

That matters beyond one bad weekend. The FAA's systems are old, the outage exposed how thin the redundancy is, and the political response has so far produced blame rather than a repair plan. For European carriers, the lesson is that a Dutch flight can be cancelled by a router in Virginia.

What happens next

• Through the weekend: airlines are repositioning aircraft and crews, so delays and cancellations will persist into Sunday.
• If your flight is cancelled: EU rules give you the choice of a refund or rebooking, plus assistance while you wait.
• Before travelling: check the airline app and Schiphol's departure board; airport queues are the least predictable part.
• Watch the FAA: expect hearings and questions about why a 25-year-old system had no working fallback.

Vibra will keep an eye on flight disruption affecting Amsterdam and on the events worth rearranging your trip for. A free Vibra profile holds your tickets, saved parties and Pulse points in one place, and our Amsterdam LGBTQ+ calendar is updated every week.

Sources: NL Times, 14 November 2026; The Advocate, 13 November 2026; NBC News and Business Insider headlines, 14 November 2026; FlightRadar24 figures via NL Times.