Air travel across the United States will remain disrupted until late on Sunday, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said, The Citizen Tanzania reported. The problems follow a nationwide ground stop that halted thousands of US flights. Officials blamed the outage on aging technology.
Citizen Digital reported that the shutdown has been traced to a router installed by L3Harris. It called the incident the latest painful example of the aging US air traffic control telecom system. Officials are struggling to replace outdated systems while keeping existing communications running.
On Saturday, a day after the ground stop, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy held a televised press conference on the chaos. The briefing itself ran into technical trouble, Citizen Digital reported. Soon after Duffy began speaking, a deep, echoing hum came from the microphones and speakers.
Duffy tested the microphone, apologised and stepped away. Technicians rushed to replace microphones and adjust cables. Feedback returned seconds after he resumed. "This is our kind of, uh, day," Duffy said, appearing irritated. US networks carried the three-minute pause live on air.
Duffy appeared alongside FAA head Bryan Bedford and the FAA's chief technology officer, Rebecca Guy. He said it was Guy's first press conference with him. Duffy and Bedford repeatedly pointed to systemic problems in the move from 1970s and 1980s air traffic control technology to more modern equipment.
According to The Citizen Tanzania, the Transportation Department received $12.5 billion last year and has since awarded contracts to upgrade the system. The outage also caught a student pilot on his first solo flight. The Citizen Tanzania reported that a controller kept talking him through his approach.