Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Saturday suggested that an FAA contractor might be to blame for Friday’s telecommunications outage, as per his remarks at a press briefing at Transportation Department headquarters. The outage grounded flights across the country and led to thousands of cancellations.
According to Duffy, “in at least one of our remote FAA locations, a contractor was doing routine maintenance to switch telecommunication lines from old copper wire, and they were bringing it over to fiber.”
L3Harris named, but fault not yet found
Duffy named the contractor as L3Harris. “That contractor that does the work for us is L3Harris. They’re our legacy provider,” he said. He added that officials are still trying to figure out what went wrong.
{{/usCountry}}Duffy named the contractor as L3Harris. “That contractor that does the work for us is L3Harris. They’re our legacy provider,” he said. He added that officials are still trying to figure out what went wrong.
{{/usCountry}}Deep Dive
What caused the FAA nationwide ground stop?
Why did the FAA ground flights during the telecommunications outage?
Are flights back to normal after the FAA ground stop, and what should passengers do?
“Was it user error or installation error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router? We haven’t determined what the fault was,” Duffy said, as per Huff Post.
Also read: US flights grounded nationwide: A look back at the last major FAA shutdown in 2023
How a router caused the ground stop
Duffy explained what caused the FAA Nationwide Ground Stop on Friday. “Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment, that router that was being replaced as we switched from copper to fiber, it started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system. So specifically, we had over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. And what that did was give us issues with communication with airplanes, and it also caused some disruption with radar feeds.”
He said the airspace was shut down for safety. “When we see that, your safety is paramount. We shut down the airspace and we do it safely. We get you on the ground and then we work on isolating the problem and then opening the airspace back up, which is what we did yesterday.”
No cyberattack, says Duffy
Duffy also dismissed speculation that the outage was a cyberattack. “Once we were able to isolate the work that was being done at this remote location, all of our systems came back online,” he said. “So we don’t believe this was cyber at all.”
He added, “This was an FAA system that didn’t meet the moment. A contractor didn’t meet the moment, or the equipment didn’t meet the moment and caused the outages.”