Overview
- The FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop on Friday after telecommunications and radar instability stopped reliable departures for more than four hours and the restriction was lifted around 8:15 p.m.
- Officials say the disruption began during contractor L3Harris work converting legacy copper lines to fiber and that the change flooded older routers with traffic, with investigators still determining whether installer error or a faulty router triggered the failure.
- Authorities report no current evidence of a deliberate cyberattack and confirmed airborne planes landed safely while L3Harris is cooperating with the probe.
- The stoppage produced thousands of cancellations and wide delays—FlightAware tracked more than 6,000 canceled flights—and airlines are spending the weekend repositioning aircraft and crews as the FAA expects schedules to largely normalize by close of business Sunday.
- The outage has renewed bipartisan calls for rapid modernization of the air-traffic system, highlighted the difficulty of upgrading equipment while the network remains live, and is likely to prompt congressional investigations and new funding debates after Congress approved $12.5 billion in 2025.