WASHINGTON - U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced on Nov. 14 that a router failure during routine maintenance by contractor L3Harris triggered a nationwide ground stop affecting over 3,500 airborne flights. The shutdown lasted more than four hours on Nov. 13, disrupting air traffic control communications across the country.
What happened?
The outage occurred while L3Harris technicians were upgrading a remote FAA facility from legacy copper lines to fiber-optic connections. According to Beinsure, the router malfunction disrupted communications across more than 10 air traffic control facilities, forcing airlines to cancel more than 9,000 flights on Friday. Once the ground stop lifted, over 8,000 flight operations resumed Friday night, though thousands more flights faced cancellations and delays on Saturday.
Why does it matter?
The disruption underscored vulnerabilities in the aging telecommunications network used to manage U.S. airspace, though officials ruled out a cyberattack. "So, specifically, we had over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. And what that did was give us issues with our communication with airplanes and it also caused some disruption with our radar feeds," Secretary Duffy said during the Nov. 14 briefing. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford noted the agency spends a billion dollars a year sustaining its 1980s-era network, while L3Harris has worked for the FAA for over 20 years.
What comes next?
The FAA expects airline operations to recover fully by Nov. 15 as carriers reposition aircraft and crews. Investigators are working to determine whether L3Harris installation errors or a faulty router caused the flood of connection attempts, and the Transportation Department will reevaluate conducting daytime network switchovers at remote facilities.
