Transportation secretary blames ‘routine’ equipment upgrade for grounding flights nationwide

Summary

• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated a nationwide ground stop was caused by routine maintenance work involving an upgrade from copper wire to fiber optic cable by L3Harris.
• A router overloaded a critical communication system after the upgrade, triggering the ground stop.
• Officials are investigating whether the cause was user error, installer error by L3Harris, or a faulty router.
• FAA acting CTO Rebecca Guy identified two locations pinging the network at a high rate of one thousand connections every four to five seconds.
• The FAA disabled the two problematic connections to stabilize the network and is conducting a root cause analysis.
• Secretary Duffy noted that while major airport switchovers occur late at night, remote switchovers happen during the day, though the timing of this work will be reevaluated.
• This incident marks only the third nationwide ground stop of the 21st century.
• More than 8,200 flights were canceled on Friday evening, with at least another 3,000 canceled on Saturday after the ground stop was lifted.
• FAA administrator Bryan Bedford stated there is zero evidence of AI involvement or nefarious activity, confirming the issue was equipment-related.
• Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed AI as a cause, referring to the issue as "SI" (system instability).