Airport nightmares continue as FAA struggles to pinpoint blame for historic meltdown

Detailed summary

Travelers face ongoing flight delays and cancellations as the FAA and Transportation Department investigate whether human error or equipment caused Friday's meltdown.

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation was working Saturday to determine whether Friday’s air traffic control system meltdown resulted from human error or equipment failure as travelers across the nation continued to grapple with a cascade of flight delays and cancellations.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crisis began when a contractor was performing routine maintenance at a remote Federal Aviation Administration location to switch telecommunication lines from 1980s-era copper wire to a fiber line.

The new equipment began flooding other routers in the air traffic control system — sending more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds — causing radar and communications disruptions, he said. As a safety measure, the FAA decided to ground all planes for more than four hours.

It is unclear whether the contractor, L3Harris Technologies, or the piece of new equipment itself was at fault.

“This was an FAA system that didn’t meet the moment,” said Duffy. “A contractor didn’t meet the moment or the equipment didn’t meet the moment — and it caused the outages.”

A spokesperson for L3Harris said the company is supporting the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the ground stop. L3Harris said that safety and reliability are its highest priorities and that it takes seriously the impact of Friday’s incident on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations.

FAA Administrator Brian Bedford said he is hopeful airlines will be able to resume normal flight schedules by close of business Sunday.

There is no evidence that Friday’s system failure was caused by AI or any nefarious actors, Bedford said. He apologized to passengers affected by the FAA’s decision to ground flights and emphasized that no lives were harmed during the crisis.

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