US Officials Blame Maintenance for Massive Flight Grounding and Delays

A four-hour nationwide Federal Aviation Administration ground stop halted thousands of flights across the United States, leading to widespread travel disruption that continued into the weekend. US transportation secretary Sean Duffy stated that the incident began during routine maintenance at a remote FAA facility while contractors were switching telecommunications lines from copper wire to fiber optic cable. Officials emphasized that there is no evidence suggesting cyberattacks, malicious activity, or artificial intelligence involvement related to the outage. Instead, investigators are working to determine whether the issue stemmed from a faulty router or installer error, while highlighting vulnerabilities within the nation's decades-old air traffic control and telecommunications infrastructure.