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Ageing FAA equipment maintenance triggered nationwide US air travel halt
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said maintenance on ageing FAA communications equipment was the preliminary cause of a nationwide ground stop that halted US air travel for hours. The disruption matters because it affected passengers and airline operations, with delays and cancellations expected to continue through the weekend.
A contractor, L3Harris, was replacing old copper lines with fibre at an FAA remote site when communications failed, apparently disrupting routers and radar feeds. Officials had not determined whether the cause was installation error, a faulty router or other contractor work; they said they did not believe it was a cyberattack. FAA chief Bryan Bedford said the ground stop was ordered after officials could not locate the fault for about 45 minutes, while Duffy called for more funding to modernise equipment dating from the 1970s and 1980s.
In short
- Ageing FAA equipment failed during a copper-to-fibre upgrade.
- The outage halted US air travel for hours.
- Officials are investigating the contractor’s work and equipment.
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Originally published by Daily Mail as “Cause of catastrophic ground stop revealed as transportation secretary blames archaic equipment found in ‘remote location’ that was running country’s entire airspace”.