Outdated infrastructure is to blame for hours long ground stop at Dallas airports, FAA says
The Federal Aviation Administration says outdated infrastructure is to blame for an unexpected ground stop on Friday at Dallas' two major airports.
The ground stop was in effect for about five hours, impacting all flights at Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International airports.
The FAA said the disruption was caused by multiple failures of the TDMI data telecommunications service provided by Frontier, which led to the outage impacting the FAA's Dallas TRACON facility.
Additionally, the FAA said an oversight by L3 Harris, an FAA contractor, failed to make sure that redundancies in the system functioned properly.
The outage is a "clear example of the FAA's outdated infrastructure and underscores the urgent need to modernize our air traffic control systems," the FAA said.
The FAA also said the outage emphasized the importance of clearing "thousands of state and local permitting obstacles, which will delay modernization efforts by years."
The FAA said moving from analog systems to digital technology will help maintain the national airspace system.
Operations at the airports have since returned to normal levels. The FAA said it is working closely with airlines on recovery plans to support the impacted flights.
American Airlines COO expresses disappointment over outage
In a letter, American Airlines COO David Seymour said Friday was an incredibly challenging day for the team and travelers.
Seymour said the FAA told the airline that the issue originally stemmed from two cut fiber optic cables, impacting the primary and secondary paths of data that support the FAA's area radars, radio systems and computer systems. The FAA had developed alternative methods to release flights from their gates, Seymour said, but it was extremely slow.
"[American is] extraordinarily disappointed that neither [L3 Harris and Frontier] seems to have any sense of urgency to resolve this matter," Seymour said, noting that he has had a difficult time reaching leadership at those companies.
Over 530 American Airlines flights were canceled on Friday. Seymour said 160 were canceled so far Saturday morning.
The FAA, L3 Harris and Frontier worked through the night to make repairs to the system but were partially successful, Seymour said. Earlier Saturday morning, there was another ground stop at DFW and Love Field airports due to an outage, but it was lifted within 30 minutes.