Federal aviation authorities in the United States have been warned for years that rapid modernisation of the air traffic control system could cause serious disruptions, including stopping national flights.
According to an article The Washington PostThe warnings were included in government reports published months and years before Friday’s break, which for nearly four and a half hours banned flights across the country and caused the cancellation of more than 12 thousand flights.
Federal officials attributed the incident to an overloaded rut, which a contractor was installing under the project to replace cable cables with fiber optics to the air traffic control network.
US Transport Secretary Sean P. Duffy, said the device was generating more than a thousand related efforts every four to five seconds, causing instability in the system that enables controllers to communicate with planes at high altitudes.
Duffy described the case as an isolated incident, saying it may have been an error of contractor or device defect. Meanwhile, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA), Bryan Bedford, said modernisation must continue, as the system will continue to have problems until it is replaced.
However, a report from the Government Awareness Office ( GAO, published in September, had warned that the approach of the FAA for modernisation of the system was giving priority to speed, increasing the risk of uncertainty of potential costs and cuts.
According to the report, the project includes more than 11,000 specific interventions, which were not being managed through an overall coordinated schedule. For this reason, improvements to various objects could be made in several visits, without the initial treatment of potential conflicts or their impact on air control operations.
Even a security assessment, ordered by the FAA in 2023, had warned of the danger of disruptions during technology updates. Experts had stressed the need for old systems to be preserved during transition to new technology.
An FAA technical official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the agency’s approach included risks, as changes were being made in a fragile system that must function without interruption. He compared the process to changing the engine of a car while it is on the move.
Meanwhile, the union of aviation security specialists said the technicians represented by it were not involved in improvements leading to the prevention of flights. According to the union, the previous practice required FAA employees to conduct risk assessments and co-ordinate equipment maintenance.
The modernisation project includes replacing the old network of fiber optic cable communication. The contracting company L3 Harris Technology has accelerated work over the past year and, according to Duffy, about 70 percent of it has already been completed.
Duffy repeatedly criticised the company, saying authorities would hold contractors responsible for the weak services. On the other hand, a L3Haris spokesman said the company is supporting the FAA investigation to understand the circumstances leading up to the 13 November break.
Former FAA security official Tom Lintner warned that a similar incident could be repeated if modernisation continues with an unrealistic timetable. He raised questions about whether the agency had previously made a full assessment of security, including risks and ways to prevent them.
Problems with old technology have long been known. The 2023 expert report pointed out that the copper cable communication network used technology so outdated that telephone companies no longer supported the infrastructure through which the signals were transmitted.
The FAA had identified this infrastructure as one of the biggest threats to airspace security since July 2023. However, even the transition to the new system was considered dangerous, since an unplanned failure could disrupt communication with the rest of national airspace.
By The Washington Post, the group of experts who had drafted the report was committed by the FAA for a new security review in October 2024. But a few weeks after Donald Trump took office in January 2025, members of the group reportedly were breaking up.
A former senior official familiar with the report said that after this decision there was no longer any interest in continuing to review other security problems in the air traffic control system.
Source Layer: Dukeagini
