Earlier today, a widespread Microsoft outage kicked people out of everything from Xbox Live to Outlook. Now, the FAA has grounded all U.S. flights until further notice. The tech giant says these two events are completely unrelated.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced the surprise nationwide grounding of all airplanes on Friday, seemingly due to some sort of technical malfunction involving the air traffic control system. Hundreds of flights are affected, with those already in the air ordered to land.
“We have no indication that the FAA’s nationwide ground stop is related to any Microsoft services,” the company wrote on X at the end of business on November 13.
We have no indication that the FAA’s nationwide ground stop is related to any Microsoft services.
— Microsoft On the Issues (@MSFTIssues) November 13, 2026
The denial came as a result of Microsoft’s own systems suffering a massive outage earlier in the day. There were reports of Copilot, OneDrive, and other Microsoft services being down. Microsoft 365 Status on X blamed the outage on “elevated load,” but hasn’t explained the cause in more detail.
So what’s behind the the FAA ground stop? Trump administration officials have been similarly short on answers. Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin blamed a “telecommunication outage,” though the White House said it didn’t know the cause.
Q: Could this be AI related?
Mullin: We call it SI around here. pic.twitter.com/D0HpFyLocH
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 13, 2026
Transportation secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X that there was “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” “FAA technicians are investigating the issue,” he added. “We will provide immediate updates as we have them.” That was over two hours ago.
A bunch of previous notices have reportedly been deleted from the FAA’s website. Asked if AI may be involved in the outage, Mullin told a reporter “we call it SI around here.”
This is only the third time the FAA has mandated a ground stop in the nation’s history. The first was during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The second was in 2023. The Trump administration is requesting $30 billion to modernize American’s air traffic control systems. Microsoft is currently set to spend roughly $50 billon in AI investments in the current calendar year.
