US aviation shutdown blamed on L3 Harris installed router
The FAA spends US$1 billion annually to maintain its old copper wire system and is racing to replace it with more modern fiber-based communications.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) faced a five-hour shutdown of its aviation system starting on November 13, disrupting over 20,000 flights. This incident may be attributed to a single router installed by government contractor L3 Harris Technologies. The FAA's aging telecom system has struggled with various issues, including fiber cuts, accidental file deletions, and melted components causing failures in the past.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated that the FAA system did not meet the moment, emphasizing the need for proper upgrades. L3 Harris acknowledged the seriousness of the issue and is supporting the FAA's investigation into the root cause of the outage. The recent router issue caused overloading of communications at 17 out of the FAA's 22 en route centers, leading to instability in data for planes and radar.
The FAA is still determining whether the fault lies with user error, installer error, or a faulty router.
Written by urgent.news from Channel News Asia's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
