FAA ground stop
Data updated · v0.3.0
L3Harris and the FAA ground stop
On Nov. 13, 2026 the FAA halted departures nationwide. The failure was on a network L3Harris runs, during work L3Harris was doing. Who is at fault has not been determined. This view records who has said what, and how firm each statement is.
L3Harris’s role
Runs the network
FAA telecommunications contractor since 2002
Where it started
2 routers
El Dorado, Ark. and Amarillo, Texas, per Duffy
Fault
Not established
Installation, configuration or hardware
Statements still unconfirmed
8
8 items established · 1 open
| Date | Who | Kind | Status | What the record shows | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-14 | Sean Duffy Transportation Secretary | Official account | Claimed | Says L3Harris was replacing copper line with fiber at a remote FAA site as routine maintenance when a router began flooding other routers. Asks whether it was user error by L3Harris or a faulty router. Described by Duffy as initial findings. He also said the FAA system “didn’t meet the moment.” | npr.org · scrippsnews.com · yahoo.com |
| 2026-11-14 | Sean Duffy Transportation Secretary | Official account | Claimed | Says the FAA is stuck with L3Harris until a replacement network is built, and that the company has worked for the FAA for more than 20 years. | cnn.com · yahoo.com |
| 2026-11-14 | Bryan Bedford FAA Administrator | Official account | Claimed | Says the root cause is unknown and lists three possibilities: faulty installation, faulty configuration, or a bad router. Says there is zero evidence of anything nefarious or AI-related. | cnbc.com · tovima.com · scrippsnews.com |
| 2026-11-14 | L3Harris Contractor | Company response | Established | Says it is supporting the FAA investigation and takes the ground stop seriously. Says it has converted more than 70% of the planned links from copper to fiber, with its telecom partners and the FAA. The statement does not say whether the company’s work caused the outage, and does not answer Duffy’s criticism. | theregister.com · npr.org · newsweek.com |
| 2026-11-14 | PASS (FAA technicians’ union) Union | Third party | Claimed | Says the FAA technicians it represents were not involved in the upgrade work that preceded the ground stop. | abc7.com · yahoo.com |
| 2026-11-15 | FAA Agency | Official account | Established | Says its legacy equipment became unstable when data flooded the FTI network at 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. Agency statement of mechanism, not of fault. | dallasnews.com |
| 2026-11-15 | Sean Duffy Transportation Secretary | Official account | Claimed | Says the trigger was a router L3Harris switched on at El Dorado, Arkansas, and that a second router, installed about three weeks earlier in Amarillo, Texas, then flooded the network too. The Wall Street Journal reports the Arkansas router was a new Juniper device installed by L3Harris at an FAA radio site. | cnbc.com · mensjournal.com · tovima.com |
| 2026-11-15 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Juniper) Router maker | Third party | Disputed | Says its routers did not fail and worked as the installer configured them. The maker’s claim, which points away from a hardware fault. Not a finding. Wikipedia names a different maker (Cisco); the Journal and HPE’s own statements say Juniper. | tovima.com · abcnews.com · mensjournal.com |
| 2026-11-15 | Open question | Open question | Open | Whether the failure came from L3Harris’s installation, its configuration of the router, the router itself, or the FAA’s legacy equipment has not been determined. No investigative report has been published. Also unknown: whether the FAA will seek any contract remedy. Newsweek asked the FAA and reported no answer. | tovima.com · newsweek.com · yahoo.com |
Notes under each entry give caveats and conflicts between sources. What has not been checked is in the search log. Compiled Nov. 15, 2026, two days after the event.