Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday’s 4.5 hour nationwide ground stop stemmed from routine maintenance by Federal Aviation Administration contractor L3Harris to upgrade copper telecommunications wire to fiber, as total flight cancellations from the disruption topped 16,000. Speaking at a Saturday briefing, Duffy said investigators are working to determine “whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installation error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router.”
Asked why the work occurred at 3 p.m. on a Friday after air traffic controllers questioned why a switchover would take place during peak afternoon travel rather than overnight midweek, Duffy said the upgrade happened at a remote location where maintenance is conducted during the day, while larger facilities switch over at night. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford apologized for the disruption and said the work at the facility was part of the $1 billion the agency spends annually to sustain its 1980s telecom network, which L3Harris has operated since 2002, rather than the $12.5 billion Peraton-FAA modernization program.
