The culprit behind the nationwide air traffic disruption has been named in the US

The cause of the aviation disruption, which resulted in a four-hour ban on departures from all airports in the country, was work to replace copper cables with fiber optics at one of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities.

As reported by BAKU.WS citing The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), this was stated by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.

He placed responsibility on the contractor - the company L3Harris, which, according to him, either installed a faulty router or "was doing a poor job."

"Right now we're trying to figure out if there was incompetence. Frankly, we intend to hold the responsible parties accountable," Duffy said.

According to the secretary, the work that L3Harris was carrying out on Friday was routine maintenance that should not have caused major disruptions. However, after the router was replaced, the device began continuously sending connection requests to other nodes of the air traffic control system - approximately one thousand every 4–5 seconds. This caused disruptions in radio communications with aircraft and radar data transmission.

L3Harris has been working with the FAA for decades, WSJ notes. The company stated that it is cooperating with the internal investigation.

"L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines, and air traffic control operations with the utmost seriousness," the organization said.