Copper wire replacement project caused Friday's FAA ground stop

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revealed that Friday's nationwide ground stop ordered by the FAA stemmed from routine maintenance at a remote facility. Workers were replacing outdated copper wire with a fiber optic line because the old line was being discontinued. Following the upgrade, a newly installed router began flooding other routers in the Air Traffic Control system with over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. This overwhelmed the network, causing disruptions to radar feeds and communication with planes. Secretary Duffy noted that the root cause remains unclear, pointing to potential faulty hardware, a misconfigured router, or contractor incompetence. He subsequently called on Congress for additional funding to modernize the Air Traffic Control system.