Cause of catastrophic ground stop revealed as transportation secretary blames archaic
Trump’s transportation secretary has blamed archaic equipment found in a ‘remote location’ as the preliminary cause of the historic ground stop that halted the nation’s air travel for hours.
Department of Transportation Chief Sean Duffy told reporters at a press conference at the agency’s headquarters on Saturday that a contractor, L3Harris, was replacing old technology at a ‘remote location’ when the air traffic control communications issue began.
Duffy said that a contractor was doing maintenance at at least one of four remote Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) locations and was switching lines from old copper wire to fiber before communications stalled.
He called L3Harris the department’s ‘legacy provider,’ accusing the contractor of failing to ‘meet the moment,’ causing the outage.
‘What we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence – meaning, was it user error or installation error from L3Harris — 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 L3Harris?’ he continued.
Duffy said the wire being replaced was so old it was being discontinued, prompting the routine maintenance.
He explained that as the wire was being replaced from copper to fiber, it flooded other routers and disrupted the radar feeds, making it difficult for air traffic control to communicate.
Duffy reiterated that officials do not believe the incident resulted from a cyberattack. He added that once the issue was detected at the FAA’s remote location, communications came back.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a contractor was performing maintenance at a ‘remote location’ for the FAA when the communications issue arose
The FAA issued a historic ground stop on Friday afternoon. Passengers were stranded and are pictured above attempting to fly on Saturday morning after the order was lifted
Aviation officials said delays and cancelations are expected throughout the weekend. Passengers are pictured above at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey as airports are flooded with people
Duffy once again emphasized his demand for increased funding for the FAA. He said air traffic control still uses equipment from the 1970s and 80s, pushing Congress to approve billions to modernize air travel.
The transportation secretary said L3Harris owns the telecommunications system the FAA uses.
He revealed that he preferred to work with telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon, but was ‘stuck’ with L3Harris until the FAA 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 L3Harris, or whoever provided that router to us, to do a better job.’
L3Harris is a technology distributor that has contracts with multiple US agencies. Earlier this year, the company announced a proposed partnership with the Department of War to manufacture rocket motors that power US and allied missiles.
FAA Chief Bryan Bedford also spoke at Saturday’s press conference, telling reporters that officials ordered the ground stop because they could not find the source of the communications issue for about 45 minutes.
There were 50,000 flights scheduled across the US when the ground stop occurred, and 30,000 have now been completed, Bedford said.
Of the 40,000 flights scheduled on Saturday, Bedford said about 4,000-5,000 will likely be canceled.
FAA Chief Bryan Bedford (left) and Sean Duffy (right) announced on Saturday that routine maintenance by a contractor is believed to have caused a communications issue that resulted in a five-hour nationwide ground stop
The aviation nightmare has prompted chaos nationwide. A Delta Air Lines employee is pictured above searching through unclaimed bags on Saturday
The FAA chief said that although cancellations and delays will continue throughout the weekend, flights should operate normally by the end of the day on Sunday.
Bedford clarified that the telecommunications did not go ‘down,’ but ‘instability’ was detected, resulting in the ground stop out of caution.
He added that air traffic controllers at multiple different facilities reported connection issues, and the FAA issued the ground stop when officials realized there was a greater problem.
At a press conference on Friday, Duffy and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the ground stop was likely due to new equipment ‘overloading’ the FAA’s old telecommunications system.
Duffy said the FAA experienced ‘instability for our radar and communications’ at 3.36pm EST, prompting the nationwide ground stop while over 3,500 airplanes were in the air.
He argued the error resulted from a ‘patchwork’ system and demanded that Congress fund the FAA with $50 billion for new air traffic control equipment.
The flight halt was the first since January 11, 2023, after a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and just the second since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
There were almost 15,000 total delays, with over 4,000 within, into or out of the US as of Saturday at 1pm EST, according to flight tracking data from FlightAware. Over 4,400 flights within, into or out of the US were canceled on Saturday.
The Daily Mail has reached out to L3Harris for comment on Duffy’s remarks.