Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a federal contractor or faulty wiring may have caused the nationwide ground stop that disrupted air travel and stranded 1 million passengers Friday.
L3Harris employees were upgrading communication routers at a “remote location” when the system failed, Duffy said at a news conference Saturday.
“What we’re working to determine is whether this was incompetence — meaning user error or installer error by L3Harris — or whether they installed a faulty router,” Duffy said. “We haven’t determined what caused the fault. Was it the router, or were they not doing great work for us at L3Harris?”
The transportation chief stressed that investigators “don’t believe” a cyberattack caused the widespread disruption, although he did not completely rule out that possibility.
L3Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
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