More than 16,000 flights were canceled on Friday (13) and Saturday (14) in the United States after the suspension of takeoffs caused by a failure in aviation communication systems, reported the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
"We were unable to reschedule 12,000 flights" on Friday — a number that includes nearly 9,000 commercial flights and 3,000 private flights — FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters. "We estimate that between 4,000 and 5,000 of the 41,000 flights scheduled for today will probably have to be cancelled," he added.
The FAA ordered on Friday (13) the nationwide suspension of takeoffs, which interrupted almost all flights departing from the country's airports for almost five hours. The failure led airlines to cancel nearly 10,000 flights and delay more than 7,000 in one of the worst days for air travel in American history.
United States Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, stated this Saturday (14) that the outsourcing company L3Harris, hired by the FAA, was working in a remote region to replace copper cables with fiber optics when the problem occurred.
According to Duffy, authorities are investigating whether the failure was caused by human error during the installation of the equipment or by a defect in the router used by the company. "We are trying to determine if there was incompetence, that is, if it was a user error or an installation error made by L3Harris, or if they installed a defective router. We have not yet identified the cause," he said.
The problem caused a data overload in other communication centers. "We had more than a thousand connection attempts every four or five seconds. This caused problems in communicating with the aircraft and also caused some interruptions in our radar system," he said.
Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines each canceled about 20% of their flights on Saturday. At JetBlue, the percentage reached 40%. Duffy said the failure was not caused by artificial intelligence tools used to organize flight schedules nor by cyber attacks.
Although the FAA lifted the order to halt takeoffs on Friday at around 8:15 pm (Eastern Time), the disruptions were far from over. Tens of thousands of people remained stranded at airports across the country, as companies tried to reduce the backlog of passengers and reposition aircraft and crews.
The episode is the most recent and serious sign of overload in the American air traffic control system, which is facing problems arising from obsolete technology and equipment, communication failures and a lack of thousands of controllers.
Given the scenario, Duffy asked Congress for US$50 billion to modernize the system, above the US$30 billion previously requested. "This is an emergency," he said.
According to the secretary, the problems began at 3:36 pm on Friday, when control centers registered instability in the radar and communication systems. Routers and other equipment were overloaded with data and began transmitting inconsistent information, which led to system shutdowns. Duffy said, however, that controllers did not completely lose access to radar or communications while directing thousands of aircraft during landings.
The secretary said that the immediate flaw had been corrected and that flying remained safe, but warned of the need for broader reform. Earlier, the White House and the Department of Transportation asked Congress for $30.1 billion to modernize airports and air traffic control infrastructure.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, stated that there was, to date, no evidence of a cyber attack or the involvement of an artificial intelligence system, although neither hypothesis had been ruled out. The National Security Agency (NSA) participated in the investigation.
From Boston to Seattle and New York to Los Angeles, passengers crowded airline lobbies and counters Friday night as delays and cancellations piled up. As the disruptions were caused by the FAA, companies are not required to offer compensation to stranded passengers.
The only other nationwide suspension of takeoffs since the 9/11 attacks occurred in January 2023, when the FAA halted domestic flight departures for about 90 minutes.
The impact also reached the financial market. Shares of American Airlines, United and Delta fell between 1% and 2% in trading after the market closed on Friday. JetBlue shares fell around 3%, as did L3Harris.
