FAA ground stop live updates: 'Zero evidence of anything nefarious,' FAA head says

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called on Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to resign or President Donald Trump should remove him "immediately" on Saturday.

"From chronic air traffic controller shortages to repeated communications breakdowns, serious lapses in our aviation system have become a pattern on Sean Duffy’s watch. Through it all, he’s been more focused on starring in his own reality show than addressing the crisis at his agency," Hochul said in a statement Saturday.

"With millions of Americans preparing to travel for the holidays, families deserve answers and confidence in the safety of our skies. Congress must launch a full investigation to determine what went wrong and ensure it never happens again," Hochul said.

The ground stop on Friday was the result of faulty equipment, Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said at a press conference Saturday.

"We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related. So we want to be clear that we have a equipment issue, and we're working through what this defective piece of equipment was," Bedford said.

"When we have that root cause analysis complete, we'll share it with you," Bedford said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA does not believe the failure in communications that led to a nationwide ground stop on Friday was the result of a cyber attack.

"In at least one of our remote FAA locations, a contractor was doing routine maintenance to switch telecommunication lines from old copper wire, and they were bringing it over to fiber," Duffy said during a press conference Saturday.

Duffy said this transfer from copper to fiber has been happening in the U.S. for decades, saying virtually every single institution in America has gone from copper to fiber, from analog to digital.

"Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment, that router that was being replaced as we switched from from copper to fiber, it started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system. So specifically, we had over 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, and what that did was gave us issues with our our communication with airplanes, and it also caused some disruption with our radar feeds," Duffy said.

When that happened the airspace was shut down for safety, Duffy said.

"Once we were able to isolate the work that was being done at this remote location, all of our systems came back online, so we don't believe this was cyber at all. This was an FAA system that didn't meet didn't meet the moment," Duffy said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said operations are "slowly" returning to normal on Saturday with planes pushing back, taxiing and taking off.

"You will continue to see some delays and cancellations as carriers reschedule flights and reposition aircraft/crews where they are needed most," Duffy said in a post on X.

"Our top priority right now is making sure travelers get home safely to their families as quickly as possible," Duffy said.

Duffy also thanked air traffic controllers, pilots, and flight crews who have been working around the clock.

"The nation thanks you for your professionalism and dedication to the flying public," Duffy said.