Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has identified outdated equipment at a “remote location” as the preliminary cause of the historic ground stop that brought US air travel to a halt for hours.
Speaking at a press conference at the Department of Transportation headquarters on Saturday, Duffy said contractor L3 Harris was replacing obsolete technology when an air traffic control communications failure began.
Duffy said a contractor was carrying out maintenance at at least one of four remote Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sites, switching communications lines from copper wire to fiber shortly before the system became unstable.
He described L3 Harris as the department’s “legacy provider” and accused the company of failing to “meet the moment” during the work, contributing to the outage.
“What we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence – meaning, was it user error or installation error from L3 Harris — or did they install a faulty router? We haven’t determined what the fault was. Was it the router? Or were they not doing great work for us at L3 Harris?” he said.
The secretary said the wire being replaced was so old that it was being phased out, prompting the scheduled maintenance.
As the copper lines were replaced with fiber, the change reportedly flooded other routers and interfered with radar feeds, making it difficult for air traffic controllers to communicate.
Duffy again said officials do not believe the disruption was caused by a cyberattack. He added that communications were restored after the problem was identified at the FAA’s remote site.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a contractor was carrying out FAA maintenance at a “remote location” when the communications failure occurred
The FAA imposed a historic ground stop on Friday afternoon. Passengers were left stranded and are pictured attempting to travel on Saturday morning after the order was lifted
Officials warned that delays and cancellations would continue throughout the weekend. Passengers are pictured at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport as crowds filled terminals
Duffy used the incident to renew his call for additional FAA funding. He said air traffic control continues to rely on equipment dating from the 1970s and 1980s, and urged Congress to approve billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s aviation system.
The transportation secretary said L3 Harris owns the telecommunications system used by the FAA.
He said he would rather work with telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, but that the FAA remains “stuck” with L3 Harris until the agency receives more funding.
“Many of our contractors, many of our partners, they take our money and they provide really poor service to us, full stop. And we have demanded more,” Duffy said.
“We need L3 Harris, or whoever provided that router to us, to do a better job.”
L3 Harris is a technology distributor that holds contracts with several US government agencies. Earlier this year, the company announced a proposed partnership with the Department of War to produce rocket motors used in US and allied missiles.
FAA Chief Bryan Bedford also addressed reporters on Saturday. He said officials ordered the ground stop after spending roughly 45 minutes trying to locate the source of the communications problem.
Around 50,000 flights were scheduled across the US when the ground stop was issued, and 30,000 had been completed by Saturday, Bedford said.
Of the approximately 40,000 flights scheduled for Saturday, Bedford estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 would likely be canceled.
FAA Chief Bryan Bedford, left, and Sean Duffy, right, said Saturday that routine contractor maintenance was believed to have triggered a communications problem and a five-hour nationwide ground stop
The aviation crisis caused widespread disruption nationwide. A Delta Air Lines employee is pictured sorting through unclaimed luggage on Saturday
Bedford said delays and cancellations would continue through the weekend, but expected flight operations to return to normal by the end of Sunday.
He clarified that the telecommunications system had not completely “gone down.” Instead, officials detected instability and imposed the ground stop as a precaution.
The FAA chief said air traffic controllers at several facilities reported connection problems. Officials ordered the nationwide halt after realizing the issues pointed to a broader failure.
At a press conference on Friday, Duffy and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said new equipment may have “overloaded” the FAA’s aging telecommunications system.
Duffy said the FAA detected “instability for our radar and communications” at 3:36 p.m. EST, leading to the nationwide ground stop while more than 3,500 aircraft were in the air.
He blamed the disruption on a “patchwork” system and called on Congress to provide $50 billion for new air traffic control equipment.
The halt was the first since January 11, 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and only the second nationwide ground stop since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
By 1 p.m. EST on Saturday, there had been nearly 15,000 delays, including more than 4,000 flights within, into or out of the US, according to flight-tracking data from FlightAware. More than 4,400 flights within, into or out of the US were canceled on Saturday.
The Daily Mail has contacted L3 Harris for comment on Duffy’s remarks.