Copper-to-fiber work preceded FAA nationwide ground stop
A faulty router, a configuration error or contractor “incompetence” may have triggered Friday’s nationwide FAA ground stop, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The disruption followed routine work replacing a discontinued copper line with fiber at a remote FAA facility, though officials had not established the root cause.
Duffy said the old copper wire was due to be shut down, making its replacement necessary. After the new router was installed, it flooded other routers in the Air Traffic Control system with “over 1,000 connection attempts every 4 to 5 seconds,” he said. The resulting disruption affected radar feeds and communication with aircraft.
The secretary called on Congress to provide more funding to modernize the Air Traffic Control system. He said the FAA was building “safely” and “fast,” but had received only a “partial payment” for the work he said was needed.
L3Harris, the contractor named by Duffy as one possible source of the problem, said it was modernizing communications infrastructure for the National Airspace System in coordination with the FAA. The company said it and its telecommunications partners had completed more than 70% of the planned conversion from legacy copper wires to fiber-optic systems, with safety and reliability as priorities.
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