FAA Ground Stop: Routers in Texas, Arkansas Being Tested After Outage
Officials say the routers are under deep diagnostics as investigators rule out cyberattack and examine whether contractor error caused the disruption.
- On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide ground stop before 3 p.m. CT after communications disruptions affected more than 20,000 flights. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy suspects routers installed by government contractor L3Harris caused the incident.
- Duffy suspects contractor error or faulty equipment caused disruptions during infrastructure upgrades from copper wiring to fiber. A router in Amarillo, Texas, replaced three weeks earlier, started to "flood our system as well," he said.
- L3Harris, a government contractor, secured the two routers for deep diagnostic testing at its Florida headquarters. Engineers from the FAA, Juniper Networks, and Cisco are assisting in the review to determine the root cause.
- Authorities have ruled out a foreign cyberattack or AI-related incident as the cause. Officials defended the extraordinary nationwide ground stop as a necessary step taken in the interest of public safety.
- The FBI and federal law enforcement continue investigating the incident alongside aviation officials. The FAA is working to update decades-old copper wiring infrastructure to prevent future communication stability issues across the national air traffic system.
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Transportation head vows to find 'root cause' of ground stop. Trump breaks his silence on breakdown
President Donald Trump's transportation secretary says the government wants to be certain it determines the “root cause” of the problems that led to the grounding of planes across the United States before making broad fixes to air traffic control
Root cause of nationwide ground stop still unknown, Duffy says
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday that the root cause of Friday’s nationwide ground stop is still undetermined but that federal investigators have “no indication” that a hack was behind the communications glitch. Duffy said on ABC’s This Week that President Donald Trump brought together a “whole-of-government approach,” adding agencies and officials like the director […]
Duffy says routers in Arkansas, Texas under invstigation after all aircraft grounded Friday
A contractor is testing two routers from FAA facilities in Arkansas and Texas after a fiber upgrade triggered a ground stop, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday. Duffy was the Trump administration’s public face on the ground during Sunday’s news shows, pressing Congress for billions of dollars for upgrades to the air traffic control infrastructure. In a post on the social media platform X, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said c…
U.S. Transportation Department is determining whether a nationwide ground stop was caused by faulty wiring or user error
Transportation Department Secretary Sean Duffy blamed a federal contractor or faulty wiring for a nationwide ground stop that snarled air traffic and stranded 1 million air travelers Friday. L3 Harris workers were upgrading communication routers at a “remote location” when the system went down, Duffy said at a press conference Saturday.
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