FAA ground stop traced to contractor maintenance error, Duffy says

A contractor’s maintenance work caused the nationwide FAA ground stop on Nov. 13, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a day after the outage stranded travelers across the country. Earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials saw no indication of a terrorist threat and described the disruption as a telecommunications outage, while cautioning that investigators had not ruled out every possibility. Mullin said all flights were accounted for and incoming international flights would be handled case by case. He also said the disruption did not appear linked to the broader global Microsoft outage. The stoppage affected airports nationwide and was expected to take time to fully unwind.