Duffy blames contractor L3Harris for FAA ground stop as airlines aim for full schedules Sunday

Update, 7:25 p.m. ET Saturday: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed contractor L3Harris for the ground stop, saying the company was doing routine work to switch old copper telecommunications lines to fiber at a remote FAA site when the air traffic system was flooded with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, NBC News reported. Duffy said investigators had not yet determined whether the cause was installer error or a faulty router. L3Harris said it was supporting the FAA's investigation and had completed more than 70% of the planned conversion from copper to fiber, ABC News reported. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said there was "zero evidence of anything nefarious" and that about 12,000 flights affected Friday never recovered. More than 5,200 flights were canceled Saturday, ABC reported, and Bedford said airlines expect full schedules by the close of business Sunday. Duffy raised his request to Congress for air traffic control and airport modernization to $50 billion, NBC reported.

Update, 7:40 a.m. ET Saturday: The FAA lifted the nationwide ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET Friday, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that departures would resume slowly, Reuters reported. The stop lasted more than four hours, the longest such shutdown since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, BBC News reported. Duffy blamed older analog equipment, saying switches and routers became overloaded and produced inconsistent radar and communications data, while newer digital equipment kept working. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said investigators had found no evidence of a cyberattack or interference from an artificial intelligence system, though the investigation continues. Nearly 10,000 flights had been canceled by 11:30 p.m. Friday, according to Flightradar24 data cited by Reuters, and airlines said delays and cancellations could ripple through the weekend as planes and crews are repositioned.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 13) — The Federal Aviation Administration stopped departing flights at every U.S. airport Friday afternoon after a communications failure hit the regional air traffic control centers that direct planes between cities, stranding travelers heading into the weekend.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the ground stop on X at 4:16 p.m. ET, saying it followed "a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers," NBC News reported. It was just the second time since the Sept. 11 attacks that the agency had grounded flights nationwide, the Associated Press reported, with officials citing "extraordinary circumstances."

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that the cause was a telecommunications outage and that there was "no indication as of yet" of anything nefarious. He said President Donald Trump had been briefed and that officials were "not ruling out anything at this point." The FAA said on X that every flight had been accounted for.

More than 1,000 flights had been canceled by early evening, ABC News reported. Delta and United said they would waive change fees for affected travelers. Some airports began running short of room to park jets, and San Francisco International said Pacific-bound flights, including those to Hawaii and Asia, were cleared to leave around 6 p.m. ET, according to NBC News.

Officials told NBC News they had seen no evidence of the kind of activity usually tied to a cyberattack, though they cautioned the investigation was early. Microsoft said it had no indication the ground stop was connected to its own recent service disruption.

The outage came days after the FAA said its new AI-assisted traffic management platform, known as SMART, was active nationwide. It was not clear whether the two were related, NBC News reported, and the company that supplies the software said the ground stop was not caused by its system. The FAA gave no timeline for restarting departures, leaving airlines, cargo carriers and sports teams scheduled to travel this weekend waiting for word.