Brooks Nader Stranded on Private Jet as FAA Halts All US Flights
(Illustration: USA Current Affaires)
Brooks Nader was literally about to take off when America stopped flying.
The 29-year-old "Baywatch" actress and "Love Thy Nader" personality was on a private jet in New York on Friday, November 13, bound for Louisiana to attend the LSU football game in Baton Rouge, when the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop. The order came at around 1 p.m. PT — 4 p.m. ET — because of a telecommunications outage affecting regional air traffic control centres, and it was not lifted until about 6 p.m. PT, more than four hours later.
It was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, and it brought air travel across the country to a standstill. Nader was safe but stranded on the tarmac, with pilots receiving no updates and the flight looking unlikely to depart that evening. She shared an Instagram Stories selfie from the jet, throwing up a peace sign and teasing her Baton Rouge appearance — making the best of a very public travel nightmare.
Whether she ultimately reached Louisiana is not confirmed in the reports reviewed — a reminder that, for all the glamour of a private jet, even celebrities were at the mercy of the same grounded skies as everyone else.
A Day of Chaos in the Skies
Nader was far from the only famous face caught up in the disruption. Fitness model Jen Selter was already in the air, her flight having taken off an hour before the alert, while former "Bachelorette" star Kaitlyn Bristowe was stuck at an airport. Flavor Flav and Morgan Fairchild also shared their disrupted travel on social media as the delays piled up.
The scale of the disruption was enormous. A tracking platform counted 9,814 flights delayed as of 8 p.m. ET on November 13, and CNN estimated that around 1.5 million travellers were affected. For many, the ground stop turned a Friday afternoon trip into a long night of waiting — or a cancelled plan altogether.
Hollywood felt it too. The American Film Market was in its final days, several events were cancelled, and the Governors Awards and awards-season FYC events faced uncertainty as guests and talent scrambled to rearrange travel. In a town that runs on tight schedules and red-carpet timing, a four-hour freeze on the skies was more than an inconvenience — it was a full-blown logistical headache.
No Security Threat, Officials Say
With a nationwide aviation shutdown, questions about what caused it were inevitable. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no security threat and no indication of a cyberattack, and officials said the outage was not connected to the Microsoft outage reported on Thursday. The cause was a telecommunications failure affecting regional air traffic control centres — a technical breakdown, not a malicious one.
That reassurance will be little comfort to the travellers who lost their Friday evening, or to the events that had to be reshuffled at the last minute. But for an industry already on edge, it was at least one piece of good news on a chaotic day.
As for Nader, the "Baywatch" star took the setback in her stride, smiling for the camera from her seat on the jet. Whether she made it to Baton Rouge in time for the game remains unconfirmed — but her peace-sign selfie has already become one of the defining images of a day when the whole country was grounded. Emma Watson was also out in Los Angeles this week, attending the GQ Men of the Year party at Chateau Marmont, and the awards season calendar is only getting busier from here.
Have you ever been stranded by a flight delay or cancellation? Tell us your worst travel story in the comments.
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