FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford says the agency could not explain the network instability behind Friday's nationwide US ground stop. He said the faulty router flooded the system for about 45 minutes before the FAA acted, CBS News reports.
"We couldn't explain the instability," Bedford told Saturday's press conference, according to CNBC, which reports that the root cause remains unknown. CBS News reports that the problem spread to 17 facilities and that the FAA then issued the ground stop "out of an abundance of caution". Bedford said he stands by that decision.
He said there was "zero evidence of anything nefarious and zero evidence of anything AI related", Men's Journal reports. Yahoo News reports that he called the router swap routine maintenance rather than part of the modernisation programme. He said about 70% of the system has been moved from copper wire to fibre.
Bedford said 50,000 flights were scheduled for Friday. Of these, 30,000 had been completed when the ground stop hit and about 12,000 could not be completed, around 3,000 of them private flights. Those figures leave about 8,000 flights unaccounted for, and the reported account does not explain them.