Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the FAA will review when it carries out network upgrades. The contractor work that triggered the nationwide ground stop took place at 3pm on a Friday.
Asked at his briefing on Saturday 14 November why the copper-to-fibre switch was not done overnight, Duffy said: "There will be a reevaluation of when we do this work", Yahoo News reports.
He said the FAA works at small, remote sites during the day because such work is not expected to affect the wider system. "It shouldn't have that kind of impact, which is what we saw yesterday," he said.
Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate aviation subcommittee, has rejected Duffy's blaming of Congress. "You've literally controlled Congress for the past two years," she wrote on X on Saturday, according to Yahoo News.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Saturday that he expects "a very transparent hearing" on what happened. No date or committee for a hearing has been given.