The day the radios went quiet
The United States has stopped every departing flight in the country only three times. The third was on Friday 13 November 2026, at 3:54 in the afternoon Eastern time.
Friday, as it happened
Times and figures come from reports published on the day, and early reports differ. CBS put the airborne count at about 3,100 and Wikipedia at 4,042. Some outlets timed the order a little later than 3:54 PM. Details may change as investigators report.
In their words
2001 · 2023 · 2026
How big was it?
The backup that needs no wires
Every staffed control tower has a signal lamp: a hand-aimed spotlight with a narrow beam that can show red, green or white, steady or flashing. If an aircraft can't hear the radio, the tower can still talk to it with light. Pilots study the six signals before their first solo flight.
To be clear about what happened: Friday's outage hit the en-route centers, the facilities that guide planes between airports. None of the reports we read described local towers switching to light guns. The game imagines what happens one step further, when your tower's radios die as well and the light gun is all you have left.