Wire Glitch ‘Short-Circuited’ US Aviation? FAA Says Full Recovery By ‘Sunday Night’ As Over 8,000 Flights Grounded

Last Updated:November 15, 2026, 04:28 IST

Routine maintenance work to replace outdated copper telecommunications wiring with fibre-optic cables ‘inadvertently overloaded air traffic control routers’

A passenger looks at a flight board after the US Federal Aviation Administration lifted a national ground stop, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, US. Image/Reuters

United States air travel is expected to return to normal by the end of Sunday night local time (Monday morning in India), following a rare nationwide ground stop triggered by routine maintenance work to replace outdated copper telecommunications wiring with fibre-optic cables. Speaking at a briefing on Saturday, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revealed that the upgrade—carried out by legacy contractor L3Harris Technologies at a remote Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility—inadvertently overloaded air traffic control routers.

The disruption forced the FAA to halt all departures across the United States for over four hours on Friday evening, from 3:54 pm to 8:15 pm Eastern Time. It marked only the third nationwide ground stop in American aviation history, following the September 11, 2001, attacks and the January 2023 computer system failure.

How a Routine Maintenance Job Flooded Air Traffic Routers

According to Secretary Duffy, technicians were transitioning an ageing, discontinued copper line to modern digital fibre infrastructure. During the switchover, a newly installed router began flooding adjacent routers across the air traffic control network with over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds.

This surge caused intermittent radar feed disruptions and communication glitches between controllers and airborne aircraft. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford confirmed that while no facilities went completely dark, unexplained system instability propagating across backup networks prompted officials to ground all flights out of an abundance of caution. Roughly 3,500 planes already in the air were landed safely before engineers isolated the remote facility and restored full system stability. Both Duffy and Bedford explicitly ruled out a cyberattack or foreign interference, confirming that federal investigators are probing whether contractor installation error or a defective router caused the cascade.

Knock-On Cancellations Ripple Across Global Routes

Although the airspace reopened Friday night, the knock-on effect crippled airline schedules throughout the weekend. Over 8,000 flights were cancelled across the United Statesleaving more than 1.5 million passengers stranded and forcing European, Canadian, and Mexican aviation authorities to temporarily adjust transatlantic and regional departures.

Aviation analysts note that displaced aircraft and flight crew duty-time limits make recovering from a four-hour freeze a multi-day challenge—further complicated by severe weekend thunderstorms across Texas. While the FAA projects full schedule recovery by Sunday night in the US, airlines have advised travellers—including those on long-haul India–US routes—to verify flight statuses directly before heading to airports.

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What caused the rare nationwide US aviation ground stop and flight disruptions?

The ground stop was triggered by routine maintenance work to replace outdated copper telecommunications wiring with fibre-optic cables at a remote FAA facility. During the switchover, a newly installed router inadvertently flooded adjacent air traffic control routers with over 1,000 connection attempts every few seconds, causing severe communication glitches.

Did federal officials find any evidence of a cyberattack during the FAA outage?

No, both transportation officials and federal investigators explicitly ruled out a cyberattack or foreign interference, confirming there was zero evidence of anything nefarious or AI-related.

When is US air travel expected to fully recover following the nationwide ground stop?

US air travel is expected to return to normal by Sunday night local time. However, the four-hour freeze and resulting weekend storms created multi-day scheduling challenges, leaving over 8,000 flights cancelled and millions of passengers stranded.

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Pathikrit Sen Gupta

Pathikrit Sen Gupta is a Senior Associate Editor with News18.com and likes to cut a long story short. He writes sporadically on Politics, Sports, Global Affairs, Space, Entertainment, And Food. He tra…Read More

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