WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday that investigators are focusing on network equipment in Arkansas and Texas as they work to determine what triggered Friday’s nationwide FAA ground stop.
The disruption began during routine work at a remote FAA site in El Dorado, Arkansas, where contractor L3Harris replaced an aging copper telecommunications line with fiber and installed a new router. Investigators are also examining equipment at a radar site in Amarillo, Texas.
The FAA said its legacy network began receiving roughly 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, disrupting communications and radar feeds. Instability eventually affected 17 of the agency’s 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers and several terminal radar approach control facilities.
Officials isolated the two locations and disabled the broadcasting function on about 60 similar routers as a precaution. The root cause remains under investigation, and the FAA said there is no indication the incident resulted from a cyberattack or other outside actor.
Duffy also renewed the Trump administration’s call for additional funding to replace the FAA’s aging telecommunications network. He said the $12.5 billion Congress has already approved is committed largely to radar, radios, voice switches and other upgrades and does not fund a new telecommunications network or new air traffic control software.
The FAA lifted the ground stop Friday evening after determining the network was stable, and flights could resume safely.
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