Copper wire upgrade caused nationwide flight suspension, US transport secretary says
Summary
A copper-to-fibre telecommunications upgrade triggered a router problem that disrupted air traffic control communications, prompting a nationwide U.S. ground stop for more than four hours on Friday. The disruption caused thousands of cancellations and delays, and officials said the investigation was ongoing while they found no evidence of a cyberattack or other malicious activity.Key Facts
- Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said the problem followed work by contractor L3Harris to replace copper wire with fibre.
- A router being worked on flooded other air traffic control systems and disrupted communications with planes.
- Officials stopped flights for safety reasons; no flights took off from the continental United States for more than four hours starting at 15:54 EST on Friday.
- Flight-tracking data showed more than 3,500 cancellations and more than 2,000 delays in the United States on Saturday.
- Some passengers remained on planes on airport tarmacs while flights were disrupted.
- The government said it did not believe a cyberattack caused the outage, and FAA head Bryan Bedford said officials saw no evidence of malicious activity or AI involvement.
- Duffy warned that a similar problem could happen again without air traffic control infrastructure upgrades.
- President Donald Trump requested $30.1 billion for the upgrades.
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