US flight ground stop caused by telecom upgrade, transport secretary says
More than 3,500 flights were cancelled on Saturday as Sean Duffy warned that Congress must fund air traffic control upgrades.
The United States halted all departures from its continental airports for more than four hours on Friday after a router being worked on during a telecoms upgrade flooded other air traffic control systems, the transport secretary said.
Sean Duffy told a news conference the fault appeared during a switch from copper wire to fibre-optic cable by contractor L3Harris, a technology provider. No flights were allowed to take off from 15:54 EST (19:54 GMT), the longest such suspension since the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Duffy said the government was investigating whether "incompetence" by the company or faulty equipment caused the failure. Officials did not believe a cyber-attack was responsible, but the investigation was continuing. Bryan Bedford, who heads the Federal Aviation Administration, told the same briefing: "We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI related."
France 24 reported that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials had found no evidence so far of a cyberattack but were not ruling one out.
More than 3,500 flights were cancelled and more than 2,000 delayed in the US on Saturday, according to tracking site FlightAware, as knock-on disruption continued. In some cases passengers were left stuck inside planes on the tarmac, unable to take off or return to the gates. Some international flights were allowed to depart, in an apparent effort to clear space.
L3Harris said on Saturday it had completed over 70% of the work to modernise communications infrastructure before the shutdown, and that it was supporting the FAA investigation. "L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travellers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously," it said in a statement.
Duffy warned a similar failure could recur unless Congress funded upgrades to air traffic control. President Donald Trump has requested $30.1bn for the work. Both chambers of Congress are controlled by the Republican Party. Duffy described the US as having "an incredibly old telecommunications system", adding of the wire involved: "It was such an old wire that it was being discontinued."
John Pistole, a former TSA administrator, told the BBC that restarting the system in four and a half hours "shows a resilience in the system", but asked: "what's to say it's not going to happen tomorrow?"
How the reports differ
France 24 led with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, reporting that officials had found no evidence so far of a cyberattack but were not ruling one out; the BBC instead quoted Transport Secretary Sean Duffy saying a cyberattack was not believed to be responsible. France 24 described the cause as a failure in aging telecommunications equipment and gave Trump's funding request as $30bn, while the BBC put the figure at $30.1bn and led on Duffy's question of whether "incompetence" or faulty equipment was to blame. Anadolu Agency led on L3Harris's statement that more than 70% of the upgrade had been completed, a figure the BBC also carried but lower in its report.
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