Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy gave the most detailed account yet on Saturday of what knocked out the nation’s air traffic control communications on Friday and forced the longest nationwide ground stop since the September 11 attacks. Speaking at a Department of Transportation briefing in Washington, Duffy said the failure began with routine maintenance at a remote FAA facility, where the contractor L3Harris was switching a telecommunications line from old copper wire to fiber.
“We haven’t determined what the fault was,” Duffy said. “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 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.”
The flood disrupted communication with airplanes and some radar feeds, and officials shut the system down rather than risk losing contact with aircraft. “And when we see that, your safety is paramount,” Duffy said. “We shut down the airspace and we do it safely.” About 3,500 aircraft were in the air when the stop was ordered on Friday afternoon. All of them landed safely, and departures resumed that evening.
Duffy stressed that the copper-to-fiber switchover is standard work that has been going on across the country for decades, and said the FAA has already replaced 69 percent of its copper communications lines with fiber under the $12.5 billion modernization down payment Congress approved. The network that failed is the remaining analog system, which L3Harris has run for the FAA for more than 20 years.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, who appeared alongside Duffy, said the fault has been identified and investigators see “zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI related.” Duffy added that the FAA’s new SMART airspace tool “had zero impact on the occurrences yesterday.” A full root cause analysis will be shared when it is complete, Bedford said.
The secretary also pressed Congress for the rest of the modernization money, saying he has requested $30 billion in total and will send a detailed request to Capitol Hill on Monday. “How long are we going to wait, America, in Congress?” he said.
Video: U.S. Department of Transportation
