All flights nationwide were grounded for hours on Friday after a systems failure, leading to thousands of flights being delayed or canceled, disrupting the travel plans of passengers heading into the weekend.
While the Federal Aviation Administration’s operations have returned to normal, there are reports of long lines and severe delays at multiple airports across the country as the system works to recover.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy held a 45-minute news conference Saturday morning where he apologized to travelers and is still working to determine what exactly went wrong.
Duffy told reporters that upgrade work on an old telecommunication system could be a cause for Friday’s nationwide ground stop.
In at least one remote FAA location, Duffy said contractor L3Harris was doing routine maintenance to switch telecommunication lines from an old copper wire to fiber, which he described as “straightforward” work that has been happening across the country for decades.
The secretary sharply criticized the contractor L3Harris during the news conference, saying there could have been “mistakes made” by it during the procedure.
But Duffy also said it’s unclear whether there was a contractor error or faulty equipment during the switch.
“Which begs the question for us: What did L3Harris do? Did they make mistakes yesterday?” Duffy told reporters. “They own this network. They’re our prime contractor. I can’t go somewhere else. They own it. Or was it a faulty router? And we’re going to find that out. And frankly, we’re going to hold people accountable.”
L3Harris said in a statement to CNN that it is working with the FAA to investigate the incident.
“L3Harris has been modernizing the communications infrastructure supporting the National Airspace System in close coordination with the FAA,” the contractor said in the statement. “We are supporting the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the Nov. 13 ground stop of our nation’s air travel. L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously.”
Duffy also said that while a majority of copper wires have been switched to fiber, around 30% have yet to be replaced. Officials are working to identify where those copper wires are, Duffy added.
FAA chief Bryan Bedford said at Saturday’s news conference that while as many as 17 of 22 air traffic control centers were affected, none of the facilities “actually went dark.”
He explained that the agency received reports from various facilities about frequencies “going in and out” that required “them to switch between primaries and backup.” And because the agency couldn’t immediately explain why so many facilities were impacted, it issued a nationwide ground stop.
“If that had been a single facility, we would have just worked through it,” Bedford said.
He added: “But when we saw it go to two, three, 10, 17 facilities, that’s when we started to realize there was something much larger going on here.”
The department does not believe the outages were caused by a cyber attack or any “nefarious” activity, Duffy and Bedford stressed at the news conference.
“A lot of questions came in yesterday. ‘Was this a, a cyber attack? Did some foreign nation attack this network?’ And the answer to that is we don’t believe so,” Duffy said.
Bedford later added: “We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related.”
Bedford told reporters, “I do think the worst is behind us,” adding that “full recovery” can be expected Sunday as the country heads into a busy week of travel ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
While he shared that the system is now operating safely, he cautioned that the aging technology “will continue to break until we replace it.” But he vowed that the FAA will continue to spend the money it takes to keep the system functioning.
Meanwhile, frustrated travelers are reshuffling plans as they wait on long lines at airports across the country. As of 1 p.m. ET, more than 5,000 flights had been canceled Saturday and over 4,400 flights “within, into, or out of” the country were delayed, according to tracking service FlightAware .
Duffy, during the news conference, also asked Congress for further investments in the Department of Transportation.
“I think this is a sign for them to lean in,” Duffy said. “Let’s make the investments and look forward to a brighter future in aviation, a safer future, a more efficient future in aviation.”
Outgoing House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Saturday that Republicans will use the remaining 50 days of their majority in Congress to authorize more spending on the FAA.
“We don’t really need any investigation to understand we need further investment,” Johnson said, “We’re going to work to get it done.”
CNN’s Isa Mudannayake, Pete Muntean, Catherine Nicholls, Tori B. Powell and Akansha Singh contributed to this report.
