SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The nationwide ground stop that paralyzed air travel in the United States has been lifted. but the chaos will linger for days. Nearly all planes were grounded for more than four hours yesterday. They left travelers stranded in one of the most significant disruptions to the nation's air travel system in decades. Federal officials say telecommunications outages were to blame. They point toward a routine maintenance upgrade by a contractor as the cause. NPR transportation correspondent Joel Rose joins us. Joel, thanks so much for being with us.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
SIMON: Please take us through the timeline of what happened yesterday.
ROSE: Sure. The Federal Aviation Administration says they first noticed instability in their network starting around 3:36 p.m. Eastern time. Air traffic controllers were seeing intermittent problems with their radar and communication systems at facilities all over the country. By 3:44 p.m., the FAA declared a nationwide ground stop out of what it called an abundance of caution. And that continued for roughly 4 ½ hours. More than 3,000 planes were in the air. All of them landed safely, but no domestic flights were taking off. Planes on runways went back to their gates. The air travel system basically ground to a halt. Finally, around 8:15 p.m. Eastern, the ground stop was lifted.
SIMON: And as we speak now, Joel, do we know what caused the outage?
ROSE: We are starting to get a clearer picture. The heads of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration held a press conference just within the last hour, and they put the blame squarely on a federal contractor, L3Harris. They're a longtime FAA contractor. And DOT and FAA say the company was doing a routine maintenance upgrade of a server. This is part of the transition from older copper wire to fiber optic cable, and something about that work went very, very wrong. Here's DOT Secretary Sean Duffy.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
SEAN DUFFY: This was an FAA system that didn't meet the moment. Our contractor didn't meet the moment. Or the equipment didn't meet the moment and caused the outages.
ROSE: NPR has reached out to L3Harris for comment. We have not yet heard back. Duffy and FAA leaders were asked several times why this single router could lead to telecom outages across such a wide part of the country. They said that is still under investigation. They were also asked why this work was being done in the middle of a busy travel day instead of late at night, when there are fewer planes in the air. They said this was considered routine maintenance work, and it's not clear why it basically broke the entire national airspace.
SIMON: And remind us what the effect was on passengers.
ROSE: It was a lot of confusion and chaos. Here is passenger Erin Britt (ph). She spoke to my colleague after having to deplane last night at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
ERIN BRITT: We were chatting with the flight attendant. We were towards the back of the plane, and she was like, honestly, some of you guys probably know more than we do, 'cause you're looking it up on your phones, and I'm not. Like, they seem just as in the dark.
ROSE: More than 10,000 flights have been canceled, thousands more have been delayed. This was only the second nationwide ground stop since September 11, 2001, and it was several hours longer than the last one back in 2023. So it is going to take a few days for airlines to get their operations back on track. The head of the FAA said airlines should be back to a normal schedule by the end of the weekend.
SIMON: Where do we go from here?
ROSE: Well, at the briefing today, Secretary Duffy continued to push Congress for more money to upgrade the air traffic control system. But Democrats in Congress are likely to want some answers about how the DOT and FAA have been spending the $12.5 billion Congress has already appropriated and about exactly what happened here with this contractor and why it had such a catastrophic impact on the nation's airspace.
NPR's Joel Rose. Thanks so much.
ROSE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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