Timeline: How the Trump Administration Responded to the FAA Ground Stop

Agencies coordinate response

President Trump was informed within 30 minutes of the FAA’s Friday afternoon nationwide ground stop, according to U.S. officials. Within minutes, a range of federal agencies and national security bodies began sharing information.

Those involved included the FBI, the director of national intelligence, the departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Justice and Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Cyber Command, the FAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Intelligence officials searched for suspicious communications or signals but preliminarily found no indication of nefarious activity.

Flights halted for four hours

The stop lasted four hours, but it did not ground every aircraft. Medical services flights were cleared to continue to their destinations. Mullin and Duffy arrived more than 30 minutes late for a Friday news conference scheduled for 7:45 p.m. ET, officials said. They were close to lifting the grounding and did not want to disrupt that effort.

Maintenance linked to disruption

At a Saturday news conference, Duffy said the problem apparently began during maintenance by FAA telecommunications contractor L3Harris Technologies at a remote facility. The work replaced aging copper communications lines with fiber optic connections. During the maintenance, a router generated more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, overwhelming routers throughout the FAA network, Duffy said.

Funding and prevention discussions

Trump began calling congressional leaders Friday to discuss securing more FAA funding. The White House congressional team also contacted key members of Congress to work on modernizing air traffic controllers.

The Homeland Security Council invited government officials and outside stakeholders to meet Monday. The discussion was set to cover next steps and how to prevent a recurrence as modernization efforts continue.