Duffy provides update on investigation into cause of nationwide FAA ground stop
Fox News correspondent Alex Hogan reports from the White House on the travel disruption caused by a sweeping nationwide ground stop. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy joins ‘Fox News Sunday’ to discuss the investigation and urge Congress to provide funding to modernize the FAA’s telecommunications infrastructure.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday that two routers from FAA facilities in Texas and Arkansas are undergoing extensive testing as investigators determine whether defective equipment or an installation issue caused the nation’s longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years.
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Duffy said investigators have found no evidence of a foreign cyberattack. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, however, are still participating in the investigation.
“We think it was the installation or the router that was the bad actor,” Duffy said. “But we’re open, if we see something else, we’re gonna continue to investigate with our federal partners and law enforcement.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, right, appears with Federal Aviation Administrator Bryan Bedford, left, during a news conference at the U.S. Department of Transportation on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)
In a post on X, Duffy said contractor L3Harris had retrieved the routers from remote FAA sites in Texas and Arkansas. The equipment was sent to the company’s Florida headquarters for “deep diagnostics testing,” with engineers from the FAA, Juniper and Cisco taking part.
The probe began after Friday’s nationwide ground stop, which brought air traffic to a standstill for more than four hours and helped drive disruptions involving about 15,000 flights over Friday and Saturday.
The impact stretched into Sunday. FlightAware reported 3,798 delays and 1,638 cancellations within, into or out of the United States as of noon ET. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport recorded 376 delays, while Dallas Fort Worth International Airport saw 363 delays and 195 cancellations, according to the available data.
The disruption unfolded while L3Harris replaced aging copper lines with fiber-optic technology in the FAA communications network. Intermittent communication failures and radar gaps followed, leading officials to ground flights nationwide.
Duffy said President Donald Trump brought federal officials together Friday as the administration examined whether the outage could have been caused by malicious activity.
“President Trump actually had the whole of government on the phone on Friday,” Duffy said. “Was anyone seeing footprints? Was anyone hearing chatter? Was this a cyber attack from a foreign nation?”
“We have no indication that that was at play here,” he added.
Duffy defended the decision to ground flights across the country, saying passenger safety must come first whenever the FAA’s communications network becomes unreliable.
“When we have inconsistencies in our network we’re going to shut it down,” Duffy said.
Passengers wait at boarding gates at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, 2026, after the FAA imposed a nationwide ground stop because of a communications failure. (Zina DESMAZES / AFP via Getty Images)
The transportation secretary also said the FAA’s communications infrastructure remains decades old, even as the agency works to replace copper lines with fiber-optic technology.
“We’re still using an old 1980 architecture for telecom,” Duffy said. “I need a brand new telecom system.”
Duffy said AT&T, Verizon and Lumen are ready to help construct a replacement network, but the project will require additional funding from Congress.
Congressional Democrats have questioned the request, arguing that the administration has not yet used billions of dollars previously approved for air traffic control modernization. Duffy responded that the existing money is earmarked for defined projects, including radar, radios and electronic flight strips, rather than construction of an entirely new communications network.
Travelers wait at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the FAA grounded flights across the country. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Saturday that “the worst is behind us” and predicted that air travel would return to normal by the end of Sunday.
The nationwide ground stop was the first since January 2023 and only the second imposed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.