FAA holds briefing after nationwide ground stop + impacts at SEA airport

Old copper, we had to bring it over to fiber, going from TDM to IP or from analog to digital. I want to be clear, this work has been happening in America for decades. Virtually every single institution in America has gone from copper to fiber, from analog to digital. Maybe the FAA is the last one to be doing this work because the investments haven't been made. But this is not complicated, it's pretty straightforward work that we were doing yesterday at, again, a very remote location. So what we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installator error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router? We haven't determined what the fault was, was it the router or were they not doing great work for us at L3Harris. Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment, that router that was being replaced as we switched from copper to fiber, it started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system. So specifically, we had over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. And what that did was gave us issues with our communication with airplanes and it also caused some disruption with our radar feeds. And when we see that, your safety is paramount. We shut down the airspace and we do it safely. We get you on the ground and then we work on isolating the problem and then opening the airspace back up, which is what we did yesterday. And as we get more information, we'll give this to you. But I think it's pretty clear. A lot of questions came in yesterday. Was this a cyber attack? Did some foreign nation attack this network? And the answer to that is we don't believe so. Once we were able to isolate the work that was being done at this remote location, All of our systems came back online, so we don't believe this was cyber at all. This was an FAA system that didn't meet the moment. Our contractor didn't meet the moment, or the equipment didn't meet the moment and cause the outages. I've been talking about this for almost two years, and I've been asking the Congress for money. I've asked for a lot of money. Now, the Congress... gave me a partial payment. They gave me $12.5 billion. And one of the problems that we had was they weren't quite sure that we would spend the money well and we'd build with the money. And that's history of the FAA that goes back from Republicans and Democrats. They haven't spent the money well. So they want to make sure we're going to spend and spend it well. And we have. And so in the course of the last year, since I've got that $12.5 billion, I want to talk to you about about what we've actually accomplished. So we have replaced 69% Of the copper communications, we've moved that over to high-speed fiber, 69%. We've deployed surface awareness initiative technology at 143 control towers. So instead of just looking out the tower with binoculars, we have a digital screen and representation of the airfield, giving an extra tool for air traffic controllers to drive safety, whether there's weather or fog or there's an issue with line of sight, drive safety into the airspace. We've converted 469 radio sites to modernize those systems. So using 30-year-old radios, upgrading them to have crisper, clearer communication between air traffic controllers and pilots is critical because we rely on this communication to keep the airspace safe. We've installed electronic flight strips at 25 towers. We still use paper flight strips, which is 1970s technology. An airplane is passed from one controller to the next using a paper flight strip. We're moving to electronic flight strips. 25 towers have already been converted. We've installed 224 IP voice switch systems at towers. We've installed 18 new tower simulator systems, and we've installed nine SMR-4 surface movement radars. So we are building. We are building safely, but we are building fast. And I think at this point, if the Congress looks at what we've done and the fact that this is a bipartisan movement, I hope that they meet this moment. So that is Sean Duffy, the United States Secretary of Transportation, who you are hearing from there, talking about how they are working to determine if there was incompetence in their contractor, the aerospace company L3 Harris. Or if there was a faulty router as they switched their system yesterday. He was speaking about how they are going from analog to digital. And the FAA continues to do that work now, he said, in a remote location. He did address the concern of a cyber attack, saying that that was not the case. You heard him there kind of dissing Congress because he says he's been asking for money to avoid something like this This is they upgrade their system, mentioning that the FAA is one of the. last to upgrade their system. We also know that in this press conference, we're expected to hear from Mark Wayne of Mullen, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, maybe addressing more on that concern of cybersecurity. But either way, dozens of flights delayed at SeaTac. More than 100 others canceled yesterday, rolling into this morning. There is still an issue of concern, as FOX 13's Sam Campbell tells us. Alive from the airport, there's still people running into problems this morning. Sam, how's it going out there? Well, that's right, Taylor. Tons of people waking up this morning, checking their phones, and if they're lucky, checking their phones before they get here to see that their flight has been canceled. We've run into some people who have found out the opposite after getting to security. Now, speaking of security, take a look. There are a lot of flights running on time, and that means that a lot of people are still lining up to get through security, but largely things look like they are running smoothly here for the flights that are outbound. Now, at last check, FlightAware reports 118 flights have been canceled, 78 delayed, and that is just today. And these numbers can get lost in the mix, so let's zoom out for a bigger picture here. I took a look at the radar map, and I saw how few planes there are in the skies above SeaTac, especially around 6 a.m., and this was all... ...fallout from the total ground stop ordered by the FAA yesterday afternoon. And the agency just held a press conference, and if you're just tuning in, they were telling the public this was due to air traffic routers getting overwhelmed with requests, apparently a byproduct of the agency trying to modernize its systems. Now, also laying blame either at the feet of malfunctioning equipment or the contractor doing the work, whatever the reason, it has left... Tens of thousands of travelers here in Washington scrambling as a domino effect of delayed and canceled flights disrupts the ones that were already scheduled. Some of those would-be flyers made the decision to go for a long, long drive. Others are just turning around and making the drive home. I think I had hope this morning when I woke up and there wasn't any like delays or cancellations to my flight. So I got here and then it was just canceled. Most everyone else was traveling yesterday. So all their flights were canceled yesterday. I was kind of like the last hope. So that was Courtney and she was headed towards Sacramento for a friend's baby shower and that one is unfortunately canceled, at least for her. So delays and cancellations expected to continue for many airlines, but for how long, that is anyone's guess. Now I'm going to be speaking with more travelers throughout the morning here and I'll bring you the latest updates. But for now, live at SeaTac, Sam Campbell, Fox 13 News.