On Friday, we saw a nationwide ground stop that lasted for around four hours, making it the longest ground stop that we’ve seen in the country in over 25 years, since 9/11. This is of course a major screw-up, and it’ll likely take some time before an investigation fully reveals what the root cause of this was.
So far, the response from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been downright pitiful, and that’s the polite way of putting it. Along those lines, the union representing workers at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is suggesting that this might’ve been completely avoidable, because unlike in the past, no risk assessment was performed prior to the mistake that caused this mess.
Duffy can’t keep story straight, but is desperate to blame
On Friday night, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin held a press conference to update people on the state of the shutdown. The whole thing felt to me like an SNL skit, because Duffy and Mullin couldn’t even keep their narratives straight, and the whole message was so tone deaf.
Rather than thanking the public for their patience, Duffy went on a rant demanding $50 billion from Congress, suggesting it’s their fault that they haven’t given Trump money for the past year. On Friday night, Duffy suggested the following was the reason that our skies shut down:
“What happened is that our switches, actually got overloaded with data, and they went down… I shouldn’t say they went down… they started to give us inconsistency with the data from those routers, and because of that, we shut the system down.”
So he suggested that this was because of switches being overloaded due to how outdated the system is, which of course raised lots of questions about what made Friday different than any other day, in terms of the system being overloaded. Not surprisingly, he didn’t have a good answer, because he was just talking out of his you-know-what.
Less than 24 hours later, Duffy switched his tune, explaining the situation as follows:
In at least one of our remote FAA locations, a contractor was doing routine maintenance to switch telecommunications lines from old copper wire and they were bringing it over to fiber. That contractor that does the work for us is L3Harris. They are our legacy provider, they’ve been working for the FAA for over 20 years.”
“What we are working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installer error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router.”
So on Friday, the problem was that the switches got overloaded due to how old the system was, and Duffy used that to essentially make the press conference a $50 billion demand to modernize air traffic control (which I’m all in favor of, for the record, if done correctly, but this doesn’t seem to be the time or place for this). Then on Saturday, it was a mess up by a contractor.
Does anyone remember when press briefings during a period of crisis were about sharing facts, and not just making random stuff up, and sharing theories that suit narratives? Those were the days…
FAA union says there was no oversight for this project
This is way beyond my area of expertise, but I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering how one contractor can make a mistake that just shuts down our entire aviation ecosystem? Shouldn’t there be a little more oversight so that such a major mistake can’t happen?”
This is where it gets interesting. PASS (“Professional Aviation Safety Specialists”) is the union representing 11,000 workers at the FAA. According to the union, historically projects like this would’ve been overseen by FAA employees with a risk assessment and more coordination, but that hasn’t been happening anymore. Here’s the statement:
The issue was isolated to two contractor owned and maintained routers that were being updated mid-day. Historically contractors have followed a protocol where FAA employees conduct a risk assessment and coordinate the maintenance of the system or equipment. PASS-represented technicians were not involved in the upgrades that led to the ground stop yesterday.
PASS fully supports the administration’s efforts to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system. It must be recognized by the FAA that modernization will move more quickly with fewer disruptions if PASS is fully engaged.The employees represented by the union are on the front lines and they have the skills and expertise to make the Brand New Air Traffic Control System (BNATCS) a reality. These employees should receive training on new equipment and could ensure more robust installation and optimization—if the workforce were properly staffed.
So a big question is when did FAA technicians stop being involved in these kinds of projects, in terms of coordination and risk assessment?
We don’t know to what extent this is related, but it of course has to be pointed out that in early 2025, Elon Musk’s DOGE (“Department of Government Efficiency”) laid off approximately 400 FAA employees. There wasn’t much transparency about who was laid off, though reports suggested that it included those tasked with aircraft safety inspections, and repairing air traffic control facilities.
One would hope that it will be investigated whether there’s any link here between the lack of oversight of projects like this, and the job cuts at the FAA.
Bottom line
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has done an abhorrent job handling the nationwide air traffic control shutdown, in my opinion.
On Friday night, he took the time to come up with a random, convenient theory as to what happened, to suit his narrative. He demanded $50 billion from Congress (which Republicans have had control of for the past two years), and expressed no sympathy for the public that has been impacted by all of this. Then less than 24 hours later, he blamed contractors, saying they messed up some wire upgrades.
Understandably, we’re all wondering how the heck an upgrade to wiring in one place could shut down our entire air traffic system. The union representing FAA employees is suggesting that historically these projects would be overseen by FAA employees, and would also include a risk assessment, but they insist no FAA employees were involved here.
Duffy is right about one thing — there was definitely some incompetence here…
What do you make of these updates about the FAA ground stop?
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