What happened
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday that investigators are trying to determine whether L3Harris Technologies Inc. was responsible for the Nov. 13 air traffic control shutdown, the longest nationwide flight halt since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The problem arose during an L3Harris swap from copper to fiber at a remote FAA facility, when a router overwhelmed other routers with rapid fire connection attempts.
That surge disrupted links to aircraft and some radar data, Duffy said, and the FAA restored service after isolating the work at that location. "So what we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence," he said, suggesting it could be an install mistake or a faulty router, and adding, "We haven't determined what the fault was."
The immediate fallout
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said about 12,000 flights did not operate on Friday, including roughly 9,000 commercial flights. As airlines move planes and crews, he projected cancellations for 4,000 to 5,000 out of Saturday's 41,000 scheduled flights. Bedford said there is no sign artificial intelligence was involved, and Duffy said they do not believe it was a cyberattack.
Duffy added, "This was an FAA system that didn't meet the moment, or our contractor didn't meet the moment or our equipment didn't meet the moment," later noting that many government contractors provide "really poor service."
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Networks, contracts and money
AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Lumen Technologies Inc. are partnering with the FAA to build a replacement communications network. "But in the meantime, until I can build that, I'm stuck with L3Harris, who owns this network," Duffy said. A Lumen spokesperson said its network was not involved and pointed to the need to modernize, while AT&T said its network has been running normally.
L3Harris said it has finished 70 percent of the FAA network's copper to fiber conversion. The company stated, "We are supporting the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the Nov. 13 ground stop of our nation's air travel," and, "L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously."
The market angle
L3Harris shares closed Friday at 272.35 dollars, up 17 percent from a 52 week low of 232.34 dollars on Oct. 8. Bedford said airlines anticipate returning to full schedules by Sunday's end. Meanwhile, Duffy called on Congress to approve 50 billion dollars in emergency funding to modernize the aging air traffic control system, adding that the request will be submitted Monday. The bottom line: contractors, upgrade timelines and outage risk just moved higher on the checklist for airline and defense investors.
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