Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy delivered a briefing on flight operations at 10:30 am ET on Saturday, sharing more details regarding yesterday’s nationwide ground stop that has left over 1 million people stranded.
During the press conference, Duffy confirmed that investigators are looking at whether a contractor error or a faulty router caused a failure in the nation’s air traffic control system.
He specifically pointed the finger at L3 Harris, saying the workers were upgrading communication routers at a “remote location” when the system went down.
“What we’re working to determine is whether we had incompetence from L3 Harris…Or did they install a faulty router,” Duffy added.
“We haven’t determined where the fault was: Was it the router, or were they not doing great work for us at L3 Harris?”
“That router started flooding other routers in the air traffic control system.”
WATCH:
BREAKING: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says investigators are examining whether a contractor error or a faulty router caused a failure in the nation’s air traffic control system.
Duffy says the problem emerged during an upgrade from copper to fiber, when a router being replaced began flooding other routers in the network.
Officials are now working to determine whether the contractor made an installation error or the equipment itself malfunctioned.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 14, 2026
Duffy added that officials “don’t believe” a cyberattack caused the incident, but have not ruled out the theory.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon due to Air Traffic Control communication issues.
The FAA ordered all US airports to ground stop. No flights were allowed to depart, but flights already in the air were allowed to land.
The ground stop was lifted hours later.
But this is cold comfort to roughly 1.5 million travelers who remain stranded at airports across the country.
Per FlightAware, over 4,000 flights have been canceled so far, while thousands more have been delayed.
These numbers will only continue to increase throughout the day. Moreover, it may be several days before things return to normal at America’s airports.
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