Image source: AFP via Getty Images
US Transportation Minister Sean Duffy has said that the reason behind which flights were halted across America on Friday was due to a technical problem caused by the upgrade of copper wire.
All flights in the US were banned for more than four hours and thousands of flights were canceled and travel was disrupted.
Sean Duffy told a press conference that the government was trying to determine whether equipment failure caused air traffic controllers to suspend flights on Friday.
Although the ground stop was lifted on Friday evening, air travel was affected on Saturday as airlines struggled to clear pending flights.
Officials, including Duffy, previously attributed the problem to old equipment.
Duffy said maintenance work on US air traffic control systems was being performed by a contractor called L3Harris, a technology services company.
Actually, the process of converting from copper wire to fiber-optic cable was going on.
He said the US had 'an incredibly old telecommunications system', "so old that it was being shut down."
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The ban lasted for four hours
Image source, EPA
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The Transport Minister said that the router on which work was going on had started overloading other air traffic control systems and causing communication problems with aircraft, due to which it had to be shut down due to security reasons.
The government was now trying to understand whether the root of the problem was the replacement of the wire or there was some fault in the router.
The four-hour suspension, which began at 1.24 am Indian time on Friday, was the largest such incident since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
According to data from flight tracking sites, more than 15,000 flights in the US were delayed or canceled that day, affecting an estimated 1.5 million passengers.
According to local time on Saturday, more than 5,900 flights were canceled and 7,000 flights were delayed.
In some cases, passengers were left stranded inside the aircraft, unable to take off or return to the gate.
This disruption also affected the flight schedules around the world, due to which some flights from Britain and Europe had to be cancelled.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that air flights in the US are expected to return to normal by the end of Sunday.
The biggest obstacle after 9/11
US officials have said they do not believe the problem was caused by a cyberattack or a malicious AI agent, although Duffy said the exact cause was under investigation.
"We have found no evidence of any type of malicious activity or anything related to AI," FAA chief Brian Bedford said at the same press conference.
L3Harris said on Saturday that it had completed about two-thirds of the work assigned to it to modernize the US air traffic communications infrastructure before the shutdown.
The company said it was cooperating with the FAA investigation, adding, "L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on passengers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously."
Duffy warned that similar problems could arise again if the US Congress does not approve upgrades to air traffic control infrastructure.
US President Donald Trump has requested $30.1 billion for renovation. At present the Republican Party controls both the houses of the Parliament.
Duffy had previously said the system needed reform, which would cost $50 billion.
Former TSA administrator John Pistole told the BBC, "To be able to restart it in four-and-a-half hours is good news – it shows resilience in the system – but who can guarantee it won't happen tomorrow?"
A nationwide ground shutdown has been ordered only once, since all flights were banned for several days following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In 2023, a malfunction in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system prevented planes from taking off for one hour and 52 minutes, delaying about 9,500 flights and canceling about 1,300 flights.
We used AI to translate this article, which was originally written in English. A BBC journalist checked this translation before publication. Learn more about how we're using AI.
Published by Collective Newsroom for the BBC.
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