Officials are investigating government contractor L3Harris’s role in Friday’s nationwide ground stop, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday, Nov. 14. They haven’t determined whether installation errors or faulty equipment caused the disruption. Source
The Federal Aviation Administration’s halt to departures lasted nearly five hours. By Nov. 14, more than 20,000 flights had been disrupted since Nov. 13, Reuters reported. Source
Duffy said:
“We're working to determine whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installer error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router? We haven't determined what the fault was.” Source
L3Harris said it took the issue seriously and was “supporting the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the Nov. 13 ground stop of our nation’s air travel,” according to Reuters. Source
What officials say happened
Duffy said L3Harris was replacing copper telecommunications lines with fiber at at least one remote site on Friday. The new routers flooded other routers with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, he said, disrupting communications involving aircraft and radar at FAA facilities. Source
The issue affected communications at 17 of the FAA’s 22 en route air traffic control centers, Reuters reported. The agency ordered the nationwide ground stop because it could not identify the root cause. Source
The FAA said the centers experienced data instability while communications remained up. The centers didn’t go dark. Source
The upgrade is still underway
Duffy said the routers being replaced were about 25 years old and had been due for replacement in 2006. That’s a two-decade scheduling slip. Source
L3Harris said it had completed more than 70% of the planned conversion of airspace communications from copper to fiber. Source
Duffy said officials would reconsider when crews do this work at smaller facilities. Source
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