US Transportation Secretary cites system upgrade as cause of longest nationwide FAA ground stop since 9/11
Sean Duffy said a router upgrade error by contractor L3Harris likely triggered the rare FAA ground stop, and officials are investigating the fault while working to restore flights.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a routine upgrade of an antiquated telecommunications system may have caused the rare, hours-long FAA ground stop that halted all domestic air traffic on Friday. The upgrade involved replacing a copper router with a fiber one at a remote location, and Duffy indicated that a contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment caused the router to flood other network nodes, leading to repeated connection attempts and disruption of radar feeds and controller-aircraft communications.
"We had 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds," Duffy told reporters, adding that safety concerns prompted the decision to shut down the airspace. He said the Department of Transportation is determining whether the issue stemmed from install-error by L3Harris, the prime contractor tasked with modernising the FAA’s communications system, or from a defective router.
L3Harris responded that it is cooperating closely with the FAA and emphasized safety and reliability as top priorities. "We are supporting the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the November 13 ground stop of our nation’s air travel," a company spokesperson said.
The FAA Administrator, Bryan Bedford, echoed Duffy’s assessment, stating that there was no evidence of a cyberattack, nefarious activity, or AI-related cause. He said a root-cause analysis will be released when available.
The FAA expects to restore full schedule integrity by the end of Sunday, with 4,000 to 5,000 of the 41,000 scheduled Saturday flights likely to be cancelled. Bedford said crews, pilots and flight attendants will be repositioned to resume operations, and he expressed confidence that the worst of the disruption is over.