Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy Explains What Went Wrong as FAA Lifts Nationwide Ground Stop
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that antiquated air traffic control hardware, combined with issues while an upgrade was taking place, was responsible for Friday’s massive ground stop which saw air traffic cease from coast to coast.
The stop was the first since 2023, according to the Associated Press. That earlier stop was also blamed on antiquated computer software. Before then, the last major ground stoppage came amid the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The outage caused thousands of flights and possibly over a million travelers to be stranded.
The stoppage began at a little before 3:54 p.m. Eastern, and was the longest stop since 9/11. While some domestic flights were taking off Friday evening, the Associated Press reported that international flights seemed to be taking priority when the stop ended around 8:30 p.m. Eastern.
WASHINGTON (AP) — FAA says airplane departures can resume after agency lifts nationwide ground stop caused by communications problems.
— Meg Kinnard (@MegKinnardAP) November 14, 2026
During a media briefing on the ground stop, Duffy said the cause was that “we experienced instability for our radar and our communications and our centers and our TRACONs across the country.”
TRACON is a series of automated support centers which assist human controllers and are one of the layers of redundancy that guide a flight on its journey. Like many U.S. air traffic control systems, TRACON is extremely reliable but also designed long before the immense amounts of data current systems are now required to handle.
In a recent, if unrelated, example, the Federal Aviation Administration announced earlier this month that it would phase out floppy disks from a critical system by 2028, leading to questions about why floppy disks were still being used in any mission-critical capacity in the 21st century.
Because of the TRACON data, Duffy said that “we started to have inconsistency in the data from the radars and our communication with airplanes.”
“And we have procedures for this, our pilots are well trained, our air traffic controllers are well trained, and at that point we issued a ground stop,” he added.
“We had over 3,500 airplanes in the air, they all engaged and, last time I looked, we had less than 400 in the airspace as they were all coming in to safely land and we navigated it with our well-known procedures that we have when these incidents happen,” he added.
DUFFY REVEALS WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SKIES!
“At 3:36 p.m., we experienced instability for our radar and our communications and our centers and our TRACONs across the country.”
Transportation Secretary @SecDuffy laid out the timeline of tonight’s nationwide FAA ground stop from the White House briefing room.
“We started to have inconsistency in the data from the radars and our communication with airplanes. And we have procedures for this. Our pilots are well trained. Our air traffic controllers are well trained.”
“At that point, we issued a ground stop. We had over 3,500 airplanes in the air. And last time I looked, we had less than 400 in the airspace as they were all coming in to safely land.”
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 14, 2026
Duffy went on to explain that the aged equipment was to blame — especially since it didn’t mesh with modern equipment.
“Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data and they… started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers,” Duffy said.
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“And because of that, we shut the system down. Now, I have already replaced some of those switches with President Trump.”
“And our new IP switches did not go down. It’s the old hardware that went down,” he said, asking Congress to fund a complete overhaul.
DUFFY: OUTDATED HARDWARE TO BLAME FOR THE GROUND STOP!
“Our switches, our routers, actually got overloaded with data… It’s the old hardware that went down.”
Transportation Secretary @SecDuffy is explaining what caused the nationwide FAA ground stop from the White House briefing room right now.
“I have already replaced some of those switches with President Trump, and our new IP switches did not go down.”
“President Trump has asked for the money… Let’s not do a patchwork fix to a system that’s critical for every single family. It’s not red. It’s not blue. It’s not Democrat. It’s not Republican. It’s American. Give us the money to fix it.”
Duffy says the outage hit the FAA’s analog TDM telecom equipment. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin says there is NO EVIDENCE so far of a cyberattack.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 14, 2026
“Let’s not do a patchwork fix to a system that’s critical for every single family; it’s not red, it’s not blue, it’s not Democrat, it’s not Republican, it’s American, give us the money to fix it,” he said.
In addition, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he saw no footprints of a cyberattack, adding that the shutdown was “mechanically driven.”
While the system was back up as of Friday night, it will likely take days for air travel to fully recover, although officials emphasized that there would be no lingering problems for the Thanksgiving travel rush.
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