Ground Stop
Press STOP at 3:36 PM ET with 3,500 planes in the air, watch departures pile up as rings at 30 U.S. hubs, and drag the stop length to see how long the backlog takes to clear.
The backlog clears only as fast as the spare capacity allows.
The same prompt, given once to each of two Gemini 4 models. Each card says the model's thinking level, how long its single build call took and what it cost.
The first version, with the pink rings from Friday's post, is still here: play the pink version. The Hydrogen card above now uses amber, which reads as a delay warning.
Traffic is simulated from typical schedules; the timeline and the 3,500 airborne flights come from official statements. In this model no flight is cancelled; airlines cancel flights to catch up sooner.
What happened
- On Friday, November 13, 2026, the FAA stopped departures nationwide after an air traffic telecommunications outage.
- Ground stops at Chicago O'Hare and Midway for an equipment outage came first.
- Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed overloaded routers that “experienced instability” beginning at 3:36 p.m. Eastern, when over 3,500 flights were airborne over the U.S.
- Officials said there was no indication of malicious activity at this early stage.
- The stop was lifted in the evening, about four hours later.
Thank you to the controllers and pilots working through it.
Sources: The Air Current · ABC7 New York · NBC News · WGN