FAA Rules Out Cyberattack As Ground Stop Wreaks Havoc Nationwide

The Federal Aviation Administration ruled out foul play or artificial intelligence-related causes behind Friday’s nationwide ground stop that upended the travel plans of more than a million Americans.

“I do think we’ve identified the fault, and I want to reiterate, we see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a Saturday morning news conference.

Bedford also apologized to the public, acknowledging that thousands of passengers had their travel plans disrupted as chaos erupted coast-to-coast.

“First of all, I’d like to start with an apology, a sincere apology to the American traveling public. Tens of thousands of Americans had their flights disrupted yesterday, and I want you to understand we did that out of an abundance of caution,” Bedford said.

He explained that the decision to implement the ground stop followed approximately 45 minutes of system “instability” during which officials were unable to determine the cause.

“We did that because we felt it was helpful to remove pressure from the system, holding airplanes on the ground while we continue to work through the root cause analysis of the instability in the system, and ultimately to relieve stress and complexity in the airspace,” Bedford said.

He defended the agency’s sweeping decision, saying that the “worst is behind us.”

“I think that was the right call, and we stand behind that,” Bedford said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said investigators were working to determine whether contractor error or faulty equipment fueled Friday’s unprecedented nationwide ground stop, The Daily Wire reported.

The disruption, Duffy said, was connected to routine maintenance performed by L3Harris, the FAA’s longtime telecommunications provider.

“So here’s what we believe happened yesterday. In at least one of our remote FAA locations, a contractor was doing routine maintenance to switch telecommunication lines from old copper wire, and they were bringing it over to fiber,” Duffy told reporters. According to Duffy, the upgrades were necessary because the existing copper wiring had become so old it needed to be replaced. 

“This work has been happening in America for decades,” Duffy said. “What we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installator error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router?”

Officials have not reached any definitive conclusion. “We haven’t determined what the fault was. Was it the router, or were they not doing great work for us at L3Harris?” Duffy said.

However, Duffy also ruled out a cyberattack following intense online speculation that America’s air traffic control system could have been compromised by a foreign actor. 

“We don’t believe so. Once we were able to isolate the work that was being done at this remote location, all of our systems came back online. So we don’t believe this was cyber at all,” he said. “This was an FAA system that didn’t meet the moment.”

The ground stop may be over, but the on-the-ground fallout is just beginning.

As of Saturday, more than 4,000 flights within, into, or out of the U.S. have already been canceled for the day, according to FlightAware.

More than 13,000 additional flights have been delayed. The hardest-hit airports were Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, Chicago’s O’Hare, Houston’s Bush Intercontinental, New York’s LaGuardia, and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The FAA said airlines expect to resume normal operations by the end of day Sunday.