U.S. Transportation Secretary Duffy said on Saturday officials are investigating
whether aerospace and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies is responsible
for an air-traffic control system failure that grounded U.S. flights for more
than four hours. Duffy said on Friday L3Harris was replacing copper cables with
fiber at a remote Federal Aviation Administration facility when a router issued
more than 1,000 connection requests to other routers every 4 to 5 seconds,
overloading the communications system and disrupting aircraft communications and
some radar data feeds. The system resumed after the FAA isolated the facility.
Duffy said the fault could be due to improper installation or a defective router
and added, "we have not yet determined the exact cause."
