Resolution criteria

This market resolves to YES if, on or before December 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET, an official U.S. government agency (such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), or a formal government investigative report, confirms that the nationwide aircraft grounding on November 13, 2026, was caused in whole or in part by a cyberattack or malicious cyber intrusion.

This market resolves to NO if:

• Official government investigators release conclusions determining that the failure was strictly technical, operational, or mechanical (and not the result of a cyberattack); OR

• By December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET, no official confirmation attributing the grounding to a cyberattack has been released.

Clarifications & Edge Cases:

• Anonymous leaks, unattributed claims, or unconfirmed media reports will not qualify for a YES resolution unless explicitly confirmed by a relevant U.S. government entity or agency spokesperson on the record.

• A non-malicious software update failure, internal configuration error, or inadvertent network crash does not count as a cyberattack unless officials explicitly identify it as resulting from hostile or unauthorized third-party activity.

• Official announcements can be tracked via the FAA News Updates or the DHS Newsroom.

Background

On the afternoon of Friday, November 13, 2026, the FAA issued an unprecedented nationwide ground stop halting all domestic departures across the United States due to widespread telecommunications failures across Air Route Traffic Control Centers. The outage stranded over a million passengers and caused thousands of flight cancellations nationwide.

In initial public briefings, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the failure to outdated switches and telecommunication infrastructure being overwhelmed with data. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated that preliminary investigations found no immediate indication of a cyberattack or threat to national security, though officials noted that investigations were continuing and they had not completely ruled out any possibility.

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