The FAA says systems are back at full capacity after a nationwide ground stop caused by an equipment issue during a telecoms network upgrade. Thousands of flights were delayed or cancelled.
The Federal Aviation Administration has restored full operations after a nationwide ground stop on Friday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday. "We are back at full operations," Duffy said at a press conference.
The ground stop started when a contractor updated old FAA telecommunication lines. L3Harris, a long time contractor for the FAA, was doing routine maintenance in at least one remote location changing copper wire to fiber optics. The work involved replacing an old copper wire with fiber-optic cable and installing a new router.
Duffy said the FAA is still investigating the exact error that started flooding other routers in the air traffic control system, and if L3Harris was at all responsible.
"It's pretty straightforward work that we were doing yesterday at, again, a very remote location. So what we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error, installator error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router?"
In a statement on their website, L3Harris said they have been working with the FAA to modernize communication infrastructure, including converting copper wires to a fiber optic system. The contractor said they have completed more than 70% of those conversions.
"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," the statement said. "L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously."
Nearly 25,000 flights were delayed, and over 9,000 were cancelled on Friday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking site. The disruption seeped into Saturday morning with more than 4,000 cancellations recorded, which is 18% of flights departing the U.S., according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
Times Now reported FlightAware data showed more than 4,700 domestic and international flights canceled and over 13,500 delayed as of 11:50 a.m. ET on Saturday.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said as many as 5,000 flights could be canceled before Saturday ends. Airlines have told the agency they expect to be back to normal by the end of the day Sunday. Bedford said schedule problems should be resolved by Sunday evening.
Bedford said there was no evidence of anything nefarious happening or any AI-related issues. Both officials said the ground stop was ordered as a precaution to protect passengers and flight crews. Bedford said there is no reason to think a cyberattack or an AI problem played a part.
Duffy said he has been asking Congress for money to make more upgrades. In July 2025, Congress approved $12.5 billion to modernize the nation's aging air traffic control system. After Friday's outage, Duffy raised his request to $50 billion.
"This is the moment, if we don't start to switch out our systems, when, how long are we going to wait, America, and Congress?" Duffy asked.
This was only the second nationwide ground stop since September 11, 2001. The U.S. last issued a ground stop of this scale in 2023, when all U.S. airports were shut down due to an outage in the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system. The FAA has recently begun rolling out an AI-enhanced software tool known as the SMART system as part of its overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system. Air Space Intelligence, the company that makes the tool, said on social media: "The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC."
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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