FAA back at "full operations" after Friday outage, Transportation Sec. says

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Saturday that all Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) systems have returned to full operations following a major outage on Friday evening. The outage led to the grounding of all air traffic across the United States. Duffy urged Congress to fund upgrades to the nation's air traffic control equipment, stating that proper upgrades could have prevented the ground stop.

The outage was caused by a contractor performing routine maintenance on a telecommunications line, which involved upgrading a copper wire to fiber-optic cable and installing a new router. Duffy was unsure whether the error stemmed from contractor negligence or faulty equipment. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford warned that up to 5,000 flight cancellations were expected to remain throughout the day, but airlines assured the agency that normal operations should resume by the end of Sunday.

As of 11:30 am ET, over 4,600 international and domestic flights had been canceled, and over 13,000 delayed. Both Bedford and Duffy emphasized that the ground stop was ordered out of caution for passenger and crew safety. Bedford dismissed the possibility of a cyberattack or AI issue causing the outage, stating, "We see zero evidence of anything nefarious."

Duffy reiterated his plea for Congress to fund upgrades for the aging air traffic control system, having previously requested $30 billion for updates to airports and air traffic control. After the outage, Duffy increased the funding request to $50 billion.