What Happened
Telecom Failure Grounds Thousands of Flights Along East Coast
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said a series of error messages in a telecommunications circuit prompted the agency to switch to a backup fiber line before an outage snarled thousands of flights along the East Coast. The FAA’s contractor, L3Harris, advised switching to the backup line to begin troubleshooting, but the backup line was accidentally cut by a New Jersey Transit contractor, causing widespread disruptions. The incident has highlighted the need for modernization of the air traffic control system, with FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford calling for a new telecom system and estimating the upgrade will cost $27 billion in total. This was reported by Reuters.