Why the FAA’s 1980s Equipment Keeps Failing

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed old equipment after the FAA halted every departing flight in the country on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, and the federal government’s own auditors have been saying much the same for years. The Government Accountability Office found in 2024 that the FAA rated 51 of its 138 air traffic control systems as unsustainable and 54 more as potentially unsustainable.

The ground stop began at 3:53 p.m. ET and was canceled at 8:15 p.m. ET, about four hours and 20 minutes later. FlightAware counted 4,467 U.S. cancellations and 10,079 delays by about 9 p.m. ET. The FAA has not named the system that failed, so this article does not claim to know the cause. It explains the equipment problem Duffy pointed to, what Congress paid to fix it, and what is still left to replace.

Context for travelers: if your flight was caught up in it, see our guide to refund and rebooking rights after an FAA outage. If you are a visitor whose stay is running out, read what to do about an expiring ESTA or I-94.

What Duffy said, and what nobody has confirmed

Duffy described the trigger as “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” Later he said the “switches” and “routers” had been “overloaded with data” and began producing inconsistent data, which is why the system was shut down. On the equipment itself he said: “We have old switches, old routers, we use 1980s little copper lines.”

Homeland Security Secretary Mullin said there was “zero evidence” of a cyberattack and that the outage appeared to be “mechanically driven.” The FAA called it a “temporary telecommunications outage” that affected multiple centers. Those are the officials’ explanations. The agency has not published which switch, router or circuit failed, and an investigation is open.

What GAO found about the age of the system

The 2024 GAO review (report GAO-24-107001) is the clearest official picture. Of 138 systems, 51 were unsustainable and 54 potentially unsustainable, more than 75 percent combined. The FAA gave reasons such as missing spare parts, functions that no longer meet needs, and money for upkeep that never arrived. GAO said 29 unsustainable and 29 potentially unsustainable systems have a critical effect on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace.

The FAA had 64 investments aimed at 90 of those 105 systems, but GAO said the work on the most critical ones was slow. The review came after the Jan. 11, 2023 outage of the notice system pilots use, which stopped all domestic departures until about 9 a.m. ET and led to more than 11,000 delays and 1,300 cancellations. The FAA said at the time that a damaged database file was involved and found no sign of a cyberattack.

Why copper lines matter

Radar feeds, radio links and data between facilities travel over telecommunications circuits, and many of them are old copper. When a copper wire or a circuit fails and the backup does not work, controllers can lose radar or radio contact. That is what the FAA said about the Philadelphia approach control, which handles Newark traffic, in spring 2025. The agency pledged to replace the copper wire with fiber and add three high-bandwidth connections.

The GAO’s September 2026 audit counted 5,170 old copper lines in the replacement plan, of which 2,560 had been swapped for fiber as of May 2026. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told House appropriators in September that conversion had reached 64 percent. That means roughly a third of the copper was still in service when the Nov. 13 outage hit, although the FAA has not said that copper was involved.

A timeline of failures since 2023

The outages share a pattern: a single point of failure, and a backup that is missing, old or also broken. Our earlier reports cover the Newark radar blackouts and the O'Hare ground radar outage.

The “brand new” air traffic control system

The Department of Transportation announced its plan for a “Brand New Air Traffic Control System” in May 2025. Congress put in $12.5 billion through the July 2025 reconciliation law, the bill Duffy had tied to modernizing aviation gear. DOT later chose Peraton as the prime integrator that coordinates the work.

The first phase covers communications, surveillance, weather and training systems. The FAA now puts Phase 1 at up to $16 billion, and its 2027 budget request asks for $1.5 billion to help close the gap. Phase 2, new automation to track aircraft and optimize traffic, is estimated at about $10.2 billion excluding facilities, with no start or finish date.

What is being replaced, and by when

DOT set a goal of finishing the work by the end of 2028. The table compares the May 2025 plan with the figures DOT gave at its April 2026 summit and what officials have reported done.

Note that the count for several items has changed between announcements. The FAA has also not published progress numbers for radars or voice switches.

Why faster replacement is not the same as safer flying

GAO’s September 2026 report found the FAA has no reliable lifecycle cost estimate and no integrated master schedule for the program. The agency is tracking 11,389 separate project schedules that are not linked, so work at one site can collide with work at another and disrupt controllers. GAO said the speed buys faster delivery at the price of cost uncertainty and disruption risk. The Department of Transportation partly agreed with both recommendations.

Replacement itself creates risk, because cutting over live circuits can cause outages. The FAA is also rolling out new software such as the SMART traffic-flow tool, which the agency says is active at all 22 en route centers. The company that built it said Friday’s stop “is not based on or a result of the SMART system.” Homeland Security Secretary Mullin, asked at the White House whether SMART was being examined, said, “We’re looking at that,” and “You can’t rule out anything at this point.”

What to expect and what to do now

The FAA said delays would continue into the weekend. Check your airline app first, because Delta and United offered flexible rebooking for the affected days. Under the DOT rule in force since Oct. 28, 2024, a canceled flight you decline entitles you to a refund whatever the cause. The details are in our ground stop explainer and the refund guide above.

Until the copper is gone and the backups tested, officials themselves are not promising an end to failures. Duffy said on equipment: “It’s going to continue to fail.” Travelers should leave buffer time on connections and book itineraries with a margin when it matters, such as a visa interview or a deadline.

Frequently Asked Questions