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L3Harris, contractor that revamped Trump’s Qatar-gifted jet, questioned by Sean Duffy amid FAA outage
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has blamed contractor L3Harris, the same firm working on Trump’s Qatar jet, for Friday’s FAA ground stop.
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L3Harris Technologies is facing scrutiny after US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy questioned whether the contractor's mistake or faulty equipment caused Friday's nationwide FAA outage. The company had also worked with the US government on modifying a Qatar-gifted jet that could become President Donald Trump's new Air Force One.
Duffy points to L3Harris
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Saturday that investigators are checking whether contractor “incompetence” or a faulty router caused Friday’s air traffic control outage. The outage led to a rare nationwide ground stop that lasted about four hours.
Duffy said the failure happened during a network upgrade from copper to fiber wiring. A router that was being replaced began flooding other routers in the system, as per ANI.
Deep Dive
“So what we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error, installer error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router? We haven’t determined what the fault was,” Duffy told reporters. “Was it the router or were they not doing great work for us at L3Harris? Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment, that router that was being replaced as we switch from copper to fiber started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system.”
Duffy ruled out a cyberattack. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford also backed this. “We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related,” Bedford said. He added that the FAA is still checking whether the failure came from “faulty installation,” “faulty configuration,” or faulty router hardware.
L3Harris and Trump’s Qatari jet
L3Harris is not new to the headlines. According to CNBC, in a report from May 1, 2025, the US was working with L3Harris Technologies to modify a used Qatari government jumbo jet.
As per CNBC, this came after President Donald Trump showed frustration over delays in Boeing’s work on two 747s meant to serve as the next Air Force One. Trump made a deal with Boeing in his first term to fix up these two planes. As per the report, Boeing has had more than $2 billion in extra costs on the project.
With the new planes taking longer than expected, Trump began considering alternatives. He told reporters in February 2025 that he was looking at other options. “We may buy a plane or get a plane, or something,” he said, according to a Reuters.
Also read: US flights grounded nationwide: A look back at the last major FAA shutdown in 2023
L3Harris shares fall after FAA outage
L3Harris shares closed Friday at $272.35 and fell to $261.00 in after-hours trading, a drop of 4.2%, as per 247 Wall St. The stock closed Friday down 7.2% for 2026 and is on pace for its worst year since 2011, Barron’s reported.
Airline stocks also fell after hours, according to 247 Wall St. Delta fell 2.4%, United 1.9%, American 1.8% and Southwest 1.3%.
