A suspected router malfunction during maintenance work by government contractor L3Harris has been linked to a nearly five-hour nationwide ground stop in the United States, disrupting more than 20,000 flights and exposing weaknesses in the country’s ageing air traffic control communications infrastructure.
The incident renewed concerns over the outdated telecommunications systems supporting the country’s air traffic control network and the challenges of replacing obsolete equipment without disrupting operations.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Saturday that the disruption exposed weaknesses in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) communications network.
“This was an FAA system that didn’t meet the moment,” Duffy said.
He explained that L3Harris had been carrying out routine maintenance to replace old copper telecommunications lines with fibre-optic cables when the problem occurred. Officials told Reuters that routers installed in Arkansas and Texas might have been involved.
Duffy said investigators were examining whether the disruption resulted from human error, installation mistakes or faulty equipment.
L3Harris said it was supporting the FAA’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the nationwide ground stop on November 13.
The company disclosed that it had completed more than 70 per cent of the planned conversion of airspace communications from copper wires to fibre-optic technology.
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The FAA spends about one billion dollars annually maintaining its ageing copper-wire network and is working to replace it with modern fibre-based communications.
Duffy urged L3Harris or the supplier responsible for the router to improve its performance, noting that most US institutions had already transitioned from copper to fibre and from analogue to digital systems.
The disruption affected communications at 17 of the FAA’s 22 en route centres nationwide, prompting the agency to impose a ground stop after failing to identify the cause of the problem.
Duffy disclosed that the new routers began overwhelming other devices with more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, disrupting communications involving aircraft and radar systems.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford explained that the agency had to suspend operations after the routers lost their ability to exchange data.
The FAA clarified that communications had not completely failed and that the affected centres had remained operational, although data instability disrupted their operations.
Duffy said the routers being replaced were about 25 years old and should have been upgraded in 2006.
The latest disruption followed several failures involving the FAA’s ageing telecommunications network, including accidental fibre-optic cable cuts, the deletion of computer files and a strong chemical smell caused by a melted component.
In January 2023, a nationwide FAA ground stop lasting 90 minutes disrupted about 11,000 flights after a government contractor accidentally deleted files. It was the first nationwide ground stop since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Friday’s disruption coincided with increased weekend travel, prompting Duffy to say the agency would review the timing of maintenance work at smaller facilities to prevent similar incidents.
Congress has allocated 12.5 billion dollars to upgrade the FAA’s ageing air traffic control and telecommunications infrastructure, while Duffy has requested an additional 50 billion dollars for air traffic control and airports.
Last week, the FAA announced plans to replace outdated floppy disks used to store weather and other critical information at more than 400 air traffic control facilities by the end of 2028.
The agency also relies on decades-old Compaq computers and replacement parts purchased through online marketplaces.
In September, thousands of flights across the densely populated northeastern United States were delayed or cancelled following two separate failures involving a circuit at a Philadelphia air traffic facility and a fibre-optic cable accidentally severed by a construction crew in New Jersey.
The FAA is also phasing out the longstanding practice of air traffic controllers using paper flight strips to track aircraft. The transition, which began in 2022, is expected to cover 49 major airports by at least 2028.
Reuters
