The Trump administration said the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) four-hour nationwide ground shutdown on Friday, which delayed or canceled thousands of flights, was due to routine maintenance.
At a news conference Saturday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the problems began when a contractor was performing “routine maintenance” at a remote FAA facility to “switch telecommunications lines” from copper wire to fiber optic cable.
“What we’re looking to determine is whether we were incompetent,” Duffy said, “or whether they installed a faulty router.”
He added: “Once we were able to isolate the work being done at this remote location, all of our systems came back online” and ground control was lifted.
However, travel chaos continued in the United States on Saturday.
At the briefing, FAA Chief Bryan Bedford apologized to passengers and said he believed the worst of the disruption “was behind us.”
“We will still have delays and cancellations today, but this will prepare us for a full recovery tomorrow,” Bedford said. “Based on everything we are hearing from our airline partners, they believe they will be able to ensure the full integrity of their schedules by the close of business on Sunday.”
“I want to reiterate: We see no evidence of anything nefarious, and no evidence of anything related to AI,” he continued. “So we want to be clear that we have an equipment issue and we’re looking to determine what that faulty piece of equipment was.”
Later Saturday, L3Harris, the federal contractor that Duffy said had upgraded air traffic control equipment before the ground stop, issued a statement saying it took the ground stop and its negative effects “on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations” seriously.
The contractor said it has completed more than 70 percent of the planned airspace communications conversion from old copper wires to a fiber optic system.
“We support the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to (Friday’s) grounding of our nation’s air transportation,” the contractor said.
Airlines on Saturday worked to recover from Friday’s four-hour nationwide shutdown by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that delayed or canceled thousands of flights.
As of 11 a.m. ET Saturday morning, more than 4,000 flights within, to or from the United States had already been canceled, according to FlightAware, adding to the more than 8,000 cancellations recorded Friday.
The disruption, which marked the longest nationwide layover in 25 years, left passengers stranded at airports across the country and facing uncertainty over when they would be able to reach their destination.
On Friday, Duffy blamed the ground stoppage on an aging air traffic control system, saying communications equipment had become “overloaded with data” and was starting to cause inconsistencies in the data.
“Because of that, we shut down the system,” Duffy said.
Duffy mentioned again Saturday that the United States has a “decades-old air traffic control system.” “It’s not just old equipment: we have an incredibly old telecommunications system,” he said.
“The work being done was due to the age of the copper wire we were replacing,” Duffy said Saturday. “What we were looking to determine was whether it was user error or installer error.”
Duffy echoed Bedford in saying “we do not believe” the disruption was the result of a cyber attack or a hostile foreign nation.
“This was an FAA system that was not fit for purpose,” he said. “Our contractor missed the deadline or the equipment failed to meet the deadline and caused breakdowns.”
Duffy also warned that it “will take time” for us to “resume our normal operations.”
Among those affected by the fallout from Friday’s ground stop were sports teams traveling for games this weekend. In college football, the Southeastern Conference announced that Mississippi’s game against Oklahoma had been postponed until Sunday – a day usually reserved for the National Football League (NFL).
Meanwhile, a men’s college basketball game between the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Cornell University, scheduled for Saturday, has been postponed. NBA and NHL travel was also disrupted this weekend.
On Saturday morning, flight disruptions were reported at airports in major cities, including Boston, Washington DC, New York and Miami.
American Airlines said in a statement Saturday that “while we are taking all necessary steps to limit the impact on our customers and team members, the lingering effects of this major disruption to the national airspace system will continue today, including additional delays and cancellations.”
Delta Air Lines also warned passengers traveling Saturday that they “should expect additional delays and schedule adjustments as we work to reposition flight crews and aircraft” following the FAA-ordered ground shutdown.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also issued a statement on Saturday morning warning that “although US flights have resumed, there may be further disruption as airlines work to rebook affected passengers and return all services to normal.”
Friday marked the third nationwide ground control issued by the FAA this century. The first occurred after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And the second occurred in January 2023, under the Biden administration, after a pilot notification system failed.
At Friday’s briefing, Trump administration officials urged Congress — which until January is controlled by the White House’s Republican allies — to “fully fund the complete construction of an entirely new air traffic control system.”
Meanwhile, on Saturday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, called on Duffy to resign. She also called on Congress to “launch a thorough investigation to determine what went wrong and ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
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