Cause of US flight grounding revealed
A four-hour grounding of flights across all US airports was caused by work replacing copper cables with fiber-optic cables at a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility.
Operativ Media reports that US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy stated this in comments to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Contractor L3Harris has been held responsible for the incident.
"We are now investigating whether there was incompetence. Frankly, we intend to hold those at fault accountable," Duffy said.
According to the secretary, the work carried out by L3Harris on Friday was routine maintenance and should not have caused serious problems.
However, after a router was replaced, the device began continuously sending connection requests to other nodes in the flight management system. The volume of requests reached approximately 1,000 every 4 to 5 seconds.
As a result, disruptions occurred in radio communications with aircraft and the transmission of radar data.
"L3Harris takes the nationwide flight ban and its impact on passengers, airlines, and air traffic management extremely seriously," the company said in a statement.
