Walmart, Target and other major retailers reported technical issues on Friday as the Federal Aviation Administration implemented a nationwide ground stop for departing U.S. flights.
Employees at companies including Walmart, Target, Chipotle and Skechers were affected by an outage in Workday, the workplace software used for payroll, recruitment, benefits and time-off requests. Workday, which serves more than 11,500 organizations worldwide, placed some systems into maintenance mode after identifying a problem during testing of its backup systems.
The issue left some information in an inconsistent state, potentially causing errors when users attempted to access accounts or complete tasks. The company stated that it was investigating the best way to restore service and would provide updates every 30 minutes, but as of Friday afternoon it had not given an estimate for full restoration. No direct public statements from Walmart or Target regarding the Workday disruption were available in reports.
Crowdsourced status sites also recorded elevated user reports of problems with websites and apps for Walmart, Target, Amazon, Costco and other retailers, including issues with check-out, login and product pages. These coincided with a separate, larger Microsoft 365 outage that began on November 12 and affected Outlook, Teams and related services globally due to server and network configuration problems.
Officials indicated no connection between the Microsoft disruption and the aviation ground stop.
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🚨 JUST IN: HR systems used by Walmart, Chipotle, Target, and more are now facing a MAJOR system outage, per reports
All of them use Workday software.
Unclear if there is any relation to the other major outages this week. pic.twitter.com/3g581B1tAX
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) November 14, 2026
The FAA issued the nationwide ground stop around 3:54 p.m. Eastern Time Friday after communication issues impacted multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers, the facilities that manage high-altitude traffic between airports. “There has been a temporary telecommunications outage—out of an abundance of caution, all flights have been halted. Every flight has been accounted for, and international flights will be handled on a case-by-case basis,” the agency announced in a social media post.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin described it as a telecommunications outage with no indication of a nefarious attack, stating that all flights were accounted for and that “everybody’s safe.” The order, which was imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” allowed airborne flights to land while barring takeoffs.
Flight tracking services recorded more than 10,000 delays and thousands of cancellations, with hundreds of diversions. This marked the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023 and only the second or third since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The ground stop created operational challenges across transportation networks. Airports saw stranded passengers and accumulating delays as schedules were disrupted, with potential cascading effects if the stop extended into the evening and crews reached duty limits. Amid the air travel disruptions, Amtrak reported higher demand for rail service. Its website and app displayed error messages for ticket booking, and customer service lines faced elevated call volumes.
“We apologize for the error messages on both our website and app, as well as the difficulty reaching a representative. We’re currently experiencing higher-than-normal call volumes due to ongoing airline issues. Furthermore, we recommend trying again later. Thank you,” Amtrak announced in a statement.
