L3Harris upgrade to communications system preceded ground stop: Duffy

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced an investigation into whether L3Harris Technologies was responsible for a recent FAA air traffic control failure that grounded flights across the country for over four hours. The disruption occurred when L3Harris replaced a copper connection with fiber at a remote FAA facility, causing routers to send excessive connection attempts that interfered with aircraft communications and some radar feeds.

Duffy stated that the investigation has not yet determined the exact cause of the outage, including whether it involved an installation error or a defective router. However, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford has ruled out the possibility of a cyberattack or AI involvement. The nationwide ground stop, the longest since the 9/11 attacks, resulted in approximately 12,000 flights not taking off, including around 9,000 commercial services.

Bedford anticipates airlines will face between 4,000 to 5,000 cancellations from 41,000 scheduled flights on Saturday, with hopes to restore full schedules by Sunday. AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Lumen Technologies are collaborating with the FAA on a replacement network. Duffy emphasized that the agency remains dependent on L3Harris, the owner of the current system, until the new network becomes operational.

The Transportation Secretary also criticized government contractors more broadly, suggesting that the breakdown may reflect shortcomings in the FAA system, its contractors, or the equipment itself. L3Harris' shares surged to $272.35 on Friday, up 17% from their 52-week low of $232.34 on October 8. Duffy plans to request $50 billion in emergency funding from Congress on Monday to upgrade the aging air traffic control system.