Duffy provides update on investigation into cause of nationwide ground stop
Fox News correspondent Alex Hogan reports from the White House on the travel disruptions caused by a sweeping nationwide ground stop. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also appears on ‘Fox News Sunday’ to discuss the investigation and urge Congress to provide additional funding to modernize the FAA’s telecommunications network.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday that two routers from FAA facilities in Texas and Arkansas are undergoing extensive testing as investigators determine whether defective equipment or an installation issue caused the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years.
Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Duffy said investigators have found no evidence of a foreign cyberattack. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, however, remain involved in the inquiry.
“We think it was the installation or the router that was the bad actor,” Duffy said. “But we’re open, if we see something else, we’re gonna continue to investigate with our federal partners and law enforcement.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, right, stands with Federal Aviation Administrator Bryan Bedford, left, during a news conference at the U.S. Department of Transportation on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)
Duffy said in a post on X that contractor L3Harris had secured the routers from the remote FAA sites in Texas and Arkansas. The equipment was being subjected to “deep diagnostics testing” at the company’s Florida headquarters, with engineers from the FAA, Juniper and Cisco assisting.
The probe comes after Friday’s nationwide ground stop brought air traffic to a halt for more than four hours and helped trigger disruptions involving approximately 15,000 flights on Friday and Saturday.
The effects persisted Sunday. Flight-tracking service FlightAware reported 3,798 delays and 1,638 cancellations within, into or out of the United States as of noon ET. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport recorded 376 delays, while Dallas Fort Worth International Airport reported 363 delays and 195 cancellations, making both among the hardest-hit airports in the available data.
The disruption occurred while L3Harris was replacing aging copper lines in the FAA communications system with fiber-optic technology. Intermittent communication failures and radar gaps followed, leading officials to ground flights across the country.
Duffy said President Donald Trump brought federal officials together by phone Friday as the administration assessed whether the outage might have resulted from malicious interference.
“President Trump actually had the whole of government on the phone on Friday,” Duffy said. “Was anyone seeing footprints? Was anyone hearing chatter? Was this a cyber attack from a foreign nation?”
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“We have no indication that that was at play here,” he added.
Duffy defended the decision to impose the nationwide ground stop, saying passenger safety must come first whenever the FAA’s communications network shows signs of trouble.
“When we have inconsistencies in our network we’re going to shut it down,” Duffy said.
Passengers wait at boarding gates at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, 2026, after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop because of a communications problem. (Zina DESMAZES / AFP via Getty Images)
The transportation secretary also cautioned that the FAA’s communications infrastructure remains decades old, even as officials work to replace copper wiring with fiber-optic technology.
“We’re still using an old 1980 architecture for telecom,” Duffy said. “I need a brand new telecom system.”
Duffy said AT&T, Verizon and Lumen are ready to help construct a replacement network, but the project cannot advance without additional funding from Congress.
The request has faced criticism from congressional Democrats, who say the administration has not yet used billions of dollars already approved for air traffic control modernization. Duffy responded that the existing money is earmarked for targeted improvements, such as radar, radios and electronic flight strips, rather than construction of an entirely new communications network.
Travelers wait at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Saturday that “the worst is behind us” and predicted air travel would return to normal by the end of Sunday.
The nationwide ground stop was the first since January 2023 and only the second imposed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
