Sean Duffy Blames FAA Groundstop on Wiring Work and Possible Faulty Router
The FAA lifted its third-ever nationwide ground stop Friday evening, clearing domestic flights to take off at 8:35 pm EST after several hours of system instability. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the outage to copper-to-fiber wiring work at a single remote facility and said contractor L3Harris may have installed a “faulty router,” a cause he framed as likely rather than confirmed. More than a million travelers were affected, airlines canceled flights into the evening—Air Canada scrapped all U.S.-bound flights for the rest of Friday—and Duffy warned that without major system updates there will be “more of these” outages because air traffic control still runs on decades-old analog equipment.
Background
A nationwide FAA ground stop is rare: Friday’s was only the third in the agency’s history, with domestic flights cleared to resume takeoff at 8:35 pm EST. The disruption centered on wiring work at a single remote facility, while Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the air traffic control system still relies on decades-old analog equipment.
Funding and travel fallout
The outage lands directly on the FAA’s modernization budget: Congress has already given the agency $12.5 billion to upgrade its aging air traffic control and telecom systems, and Duffy has asked for another $50 billion for air traffic control and airports, so the router incident becomes concrete evidence in that funding fight. For travelers, the practical effect outlasts the groundstop itself — more than a million people were affected, and carriers including Air Canada cancelled all U.S.-bound and U.S.-departing flights for the rest of Friday evening while they reset schedules.
