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One telecom failure grounded every US departure for 4+ hours. What builders should take from it

SummaryThe FAA halted departures at all U.S. airports on Friday, Nov. 13, after communication problems hit its air route traffic control centers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed old, overloaded network hardware. The FAA has not published a root cause yet.

· MODEL Editors · 2 min read

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Air traffic controllers at work at the FAA's Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center, seated at radar screens below a wall of airspace maps.
Controllers at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center (FAA file photo, not from Nov. 13). Photo: Federal Aviation Administration, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Public domain. Image source.

What happened. On Friday afternoon, Nov. 13, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports "following communication issues impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers" (FAA (opens in a new tab)). The FAA called it "a temporary telecommunications outage" and said flights were halted "out of an abundance of caution," with every flight accounted for (FAA on X (opens in a new tab)). Planes already in the air continued to their destinations.

How big. The stop lasted more than four hours. Reuters says it is only the second nationwide ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; the other, in January 2023, lasted about 90 minutes (Reuters (opens in a new tab)). FlightRadar24 counted more than 4,700 cancellations and 10,000 delays on Friday, plus about 700 cancellations already on the books for Saturday (via Reuters). FlightAware's counts were similar (DW (opens in a new tab)). Around 6 p.m. PT, Duffy said the FAA had restored full functionality at its control centers and reopened the airspace, and that getting back to normal will take time (Duffy on X (opens in a new tab)).

What officials said caused it. At a White House briefing, Duffy blamed legacy equipment: "We have old switches, old routers, we use 1980s old copper lines," he said, calling it "a legacy network problem" (DW; WIRED (opens in a new tab)). Homeland Security says there is no sign of a cyberattack, though Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there is "not complete certainty right now" (Reuters, WIRED).

The network. Several outlets tie the failure to the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI), the private network for the air traffic control system, which contractor L3Harris runs (WIRED). L3Harris says FTI connects more than 4,400 FAA facilities and that it is replacing the old copper links with fiber; its page says 70% of sites were upgraded as of Nov. 2 (L3Harris (opens in a new tab)). The same page says the team can "upgrade systems without disrupting air traffic operations." L3Harris did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.

The money. Before the outage, the White House asked Congress for $30.1 billion for air traffic control and airports. At the briefing Duffy raised it: "I want $50 billion" (WIRED).

What isn't confirmed. The FAA has not published a root cause. Reports of a specific software update, specific routers or the FAA's new AI routing tool being to blame are not confirmed, so we left them out.

The builder lesson. Two things are worth stealing:

  • The ground stop is a circuit breaker. When the FAA couldn't trust its communications, it stopped new departures and let flights already in the air land. Your system should have the same move: stop accepting new work, let in-flight work finish, then restart. If you don't have a single switch that does that today, build it before you need it.
  • Migrations are the risky window. By L3Harris's own count, the network was 70% through a copper-to-fiber move, and Duffy pinned the failure on the old hardware getting overloaded. When you are halfway between an old system and a new one, load-test the old half too, not just the shiny new path.

MODEL Editors. Not sponsored.

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Sources

  1. FAA Statement on Nationwide Ground Stop

    Federal Aviation Administration

  2. FAA on X: temporary telecommunications outage

    FAA (@FAANews)

  3. Secretary Duffy on X: airspace reopened

    U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy)

  4. US lifts nationwide flight shutdown caused by communications failure

    Reuters

  5. The FAA Nationwide Ground Stop Is Over

    WIRED

  6. US lifts ground stop for airports hours after halting all departures

    DW

  7. FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI)

    L3Harris

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