Copper-to-fiber wire replacement at FAA facility led to nationwide ground stop

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press conference that a nationwide FAA ground stop on Friday was linked to work replacing outdated copper wire with fiber optic cable at a remote FAA facility. He described the work as routine maintenance rather than a major modernization effort. According to Duffy, the old copper line was being discontinued, so it needed to be upgraded. He said the root cause of the disruption remains unclear and could involve faulty hardware or a misconfigured route. The full report is available at The Verge.