US transportation secretary blames routine equipment upgrade for nationwide flight halt
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a router installed during a copper-to-fiber upgrade overloaded a critical communication system and triggered a nationwide ground stop. More than 8,200 flights were canceled Friday and at least 3,000 more on Saturday.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Saturday that the nationwide ground stop that halted flights across the country on Friday was caused by what appeared to be routine maintenance. It was only the third nationwide ground stop of the 21st century. According to Duffy, copper wire at a remote location was being replaced with fiber optic cable by L3Harris, a longtime contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). After the upgrade, a router overloaded a critical communication system, which led to the halt.
What happened
Speaking at a press conference that itself appeared to suffer technical problems, Duffy said officials are trying to determine whether L3Harris made an installation error or installed a faulty router. FAA acting chief technology officer Rebecca Guy said that when the network began showing instability, staff found two places pinging it at a very high rate: about a thousand connections every four to five seconds. The FAA disabled both right away, stabilized the network and is now carrying out a root cause analysis.
Asked why the work was done at 3pm on a Friday rather than late at night, Duffy replied that switchovers at larger airports happen late at night, while remote ones take place during the day. He said the timing of such work will be reevaluated. Duffy has also repeatedly argued that Congress must provide more funding for aviation equipment upgrades.
Impact
Aviation data firm Cirium reported that more than 8,200 flights were canceled on Friday evening. The effects lingered after the stop was lifted, with at least 3,000 more flights canceled on Saturday.
The halt came one day after the FAA announced the rollout of an AI tool for air traffic controllers; the controllers' union said it had not been consulted on the system's design. FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency sees "zero evidence of anything nefarious and zero evidence of anything AI-related," and stressed that the cause was an equipment issue.
