CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Makes Blunt Declaration About FAA Ground Stoppage

Michelle Stein November 14, 2026, 10:00 am

What To Know

The FAA’s nationwide ground stop lasted more than four hours, disrupting thousands of flights and leaving travelers stranded.
CNN aviation analyst Pete Muntean attributed the stoppage to a failure in an aging telecommunications system critical to air traffic operations.
Kaitlan Collins called the airport disruption a ‘total dumpster fire.’

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins didn’t hold back with her thoughts on the FAA’s nationwide ground stoppage.

On Friday, November 13, the Source with Kaitlan Collins reported on Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s White House briefing after the ground stop was lifted. Collins spoke to CNN aviation analyst Pete Muntean about the news.

“About 11,000 flights were left to be operated by airlines at the time that this ground stop went into place,” Muntean pointed out. “Meaning that 1.5 million air passengers were stranded by this unprecedented move because of a problem with a system called time delay multiplexing, or TDM.”

He explained, “It is an old-school copper wire telecommunications system that is the backbone of the national airspace system. It’s responsible for essentially squeezing signals into one line… Without this system, they were essentially operating blind and deaf.”

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Muntean also said that Congress and the FAA “really needs to pump the brakes on new things, like its AI system that just did a nationwide rollout this week for more efficient flight routes.

Although he said the AI system “does not seem to be to blame” in this case, he added, “Those in the know have pointed out that when you introduce a new thing into the FAA patchwork of systems that is often very old, that can introduce failure. So there’s some big questions to ask here as we dig into exactly what went wrong here.”

That’s when Collins bluntly declared, “Yeah. I mean, and it’s led to this total dumpster fire that is now playing out across the nation’s airports.”

To that, Muntean agreed, echoing, “Meltdown.”

Ultimately, the ground stop lasted for more than four hours — from 3:54 p.m. ET until it was lifted at 8:15 p.m. ET — and left thousands of travelers stranded. Flight delays and cancellations have continued into the weekend.