Air space in the United States reopened after hours of suspension of virtually all takeoffs, which resulted in the cancellation of 6,000 flights worldwide, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
© Lusa
14/11/2026
by
Lusa
O air space in the United States reopened after hours of suspension of virtually all takeoffs, which resulted in the cancellation of 6,000 flights worldwide, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
The suspension decreed on Friday night, two weeks from Thanksgiving holiday, a period marked by a great flow of travel, plunged the country's airports into chaos and uncertainty for hours.
Airlines now have to transport hundreds of thousands of affected passengers. More than 800 aircraft were diverted to airports that were not in the original flight plan.
The number of flights cancelled in the United States exceeded 2,400, according to data from the FlightRadar24 platform, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suspended all take-offs in the country.
Some international flights to Europe and Asia managed to depart from US airports despite the suspension.
Several local press outlets and air-tracking platforms recorded on Friday the departure of flights that were not expected to fly over US continental territory.
Among them, some traveled from the east coast of the country to Europe, while others moved to the Hawaiian archipelago and Asia, departing from airports on the west coast of the United States.
The suspension did not affect any flight to or from Portugal.
According to the Lisbon airport portal on the Internet, a TAP flight Air Portugal from Newark, Northeastern USA, which had arrived at 05:25, landed at 5:04.
The suspension, in force for about five hours, was the longest stoppage of flights to reach the US in 25 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
“ At 8:15 [Friday], Eastern time [01:15 today in Lisbon], we reopened airspace,” said Transport Secretary Sean Duffy during a press conference at the White House.
However, Duffy warned that the resumption of air traffic would be slow: “It will take some time to recover our total capacity”.
As to why thousands of flights were cancelled, the secretary attributed the problem to “old equipment” in the 1980s.
The computer system “was overloaded with data and failed,” Duffy explained.
“ Our new equipment didn't fail. It was the old equipment that presented failures”, detailed, before addressing the Americans: “Do you want Congress to finance this? The President [Donald] Trump asked for the resources”.
The failure takes place one day after the White House asked the US parliament for an additional amount of USD 30.1 billion (27.3 billion) to modernise the air control system in the country.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin added that there was neither cyberattack nor “any connection” with the major failure that affected the technological giant Microsoft on Thursday, although it did not completely rule out the possibility of sabotage.
This is the first suspension of flights at national level in the United States since January 2023, when a critical computer system failed.