Sean Duffy said the FAA grounded all planes for more than four hours after a telecommunications maintenance issue triggered radar and communications disruptions. The breakdown rippled through Dallas Love Field and airports across the United States, with airlines warning that schedules may not settle for several days.
Sean Duffy on the outage
Duffy said the crisis began when a contractor was doing routine maintenance at a remote Federal Aviation Administration location to switch telecommunication lines from 1980s-era copper wire to a fiber line. He said the new equipment began flooding other routers in the air traffic control system and sending more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds.
That flood disrupted radar and communications, and the FAA chose to ground all planes for more than four hours as a safety measure. On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Transportation was still working to determine whether Friday's breakdown came from human error or equipment failure.
Brian Bedford on recovery
Brian Bedford said he was hopeful airlines could resume normal flight schedules by close of business Sunday. He also said there was no evidence that Friday's system failure was caused by AI or by any nefarious actors, and he apologized to passengers, saying, “I’m sorry that we put you through this, but we did it for the right reasons,”
By Saturday morning, thousands of planes were back in American airspace. Even so, airlines warned it would take several days to recover, and the FAA expected 4,000 to 5,000 of the 41,000 flights scheduled in the United States on Saturday to be canceled.
L3Harris Technologies and funding
One complication remained in the FAA's review: it was unclear whether L3Harris Technologies or the piece of new equipment itself was at fault. A spokesperson for L3Harris Technologies said the company was supporting the FAA in its investigation.
The outage also returned attention to the modernization work under way inside the FAA. Around 70% of its telecommunication system has moved to a fiber network, while the remainder still relies on copper wire. Duffy said President Trump secured a $12.5-billion investment in the Transportation Department through the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill Act, and he called on Congress to approve an additional $30-billion funding request to continue that work.
Rick Larsen and André Carson
Reps. Rick Larsen and André Carson challenged that request in a joint statement, saying: “Fifteen months later, the administration’s obligated $4.3 billion but only spent $1 billion, leaving $8 billion unobligated and $11 billion unspent,” and added, “Explain to Congress, again, why they need more money?” For passengers at Dallas Love Field and elsewhere, the immediate question is not funding rhetoric but how quickly the system can be stabilized after a failure that shut down traffic for more than four hours.
