As a long-time software guy (mostly retired), I’ve held off on saying anything about Friday night’s passenger jet groundout by the Trump regime.
8,200 flights, 31 percent of all flights Friday evening, were cancelled when the FAA figured out that a change made to its systems had backfired.
Rumors flew. Some blamed a rollout of a system called the Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories (SMART) just a few days before the grounding.
Per ARS Technica, a reliable tracker of tech news:1
The US government has expanded the use of an AI tool for advising air traffic controllers to assist in managing air traffic across the entire national airspace system. Airline executives have voiced support for the rollout, but the US labor union representing air traffic controllers has said it was not involved in designing or testing the AI-driven system.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the $875 million SMART system has helped reroute 180 flights since being implemented in airspace over Washington, DC, on September 21. The agency claims that this saved an average of 10 minutes per flight and almost 80 gallons of fuel per flight—and it is apparently hoping such results can be replicated nationwide through the expanded deployment.
“After a successful initial rollout to the National Capital Region in September, the FAA will now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country to reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public,” according to the agency statement posted on November 10.
The FAA fact sheet describes SMART as a cloud-based system that combines information about “weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing metrics” to predict air traffic patterns. It is designed to make scheduling recommendations, identify optimal flight routes, and determine the best order of arrivals for aircraft.
However, a human team of FAA specialists based in DC is ultimately responsible for validating the SMART system recommendations before passing them along to air traffic control facilities across the country, according to the agency.
Furthermore, the AI-powered SMART system “cannot be used to replace the critical role air traffic controllers play or take over control of an aircraft,” the FAA clarified in the September 21 announcement about the initial deployment. Local air traffic controllers can decide whether or not to accept the SMART system recommendations.
As I write this, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a lawyer with no experience in IT, is telling us that the problem was caused by a conversion of a copper cable to a fiber optic cable in some “remote” facility.
I can only guess what he means by “remote.” Kazakstan?
If he’s being honest, and it really is all about one cable, and that’s a big IF with this regime, here’s how these things are supposed to work:
Never, ever switch out a copper cable for a fiber optic cable, or any other kind, on a Friday afternoon if your system is responsible for simultaneously controlling the flight paths of hundreds of passenger planes. Never. Do not do this. On a Friday afternoon.
When you do it, on a night, with klieg lights blasting away, when there is as low an amount of air traffic as possible, test it before going live, FFS. If there is any part of this that can’t be tested on simulation software (why would that be the case?), have a rollback plan.
Look at that. Two easy steps that even a MAGA lawyer in an inappropriate job that overwhelms his senses should be able to figure out.
Of course, Duffy was ambushed by all this, too, just like Friday’s unlucky passengers. This all falls on the FAA, but Duffy’s the one wearing the suit in front of the microphones, so he is the one who should be saying, “The buck stops here,” instead of whining that Congress isn’t giving him enough money, which is what he did last night.
He sounded like a raccoon who was pissed that the dumpster had a tight cable around it.
Congress doesn’t give anybody enough money, especially when Republicans are in charge, so, Sean, just shut up about that. You were probably pulled out of a fancy dinner with some fellow well-dressed MAGAts so that you could answer for all this, but I don’t feel sorry for you.
This story is likely not over
I have a hunch Duffy’s explanations will change. For one thing, he doesn’t know one thing about IT. So even giving him the most extreme benefit of the doubt, he’s relaying information from experts who know their stuff to us, and trying to explain something he doesn’t understand.
A more honest, transparent approach would be to bring out an IT professional to explain it all. If he can find one that his agency hasn’t fired.
We may yet find out that the problem revolves around the AI rollout. Maybe they needed to add a fiber optic cable to handle all the increased data related to the new AI system.
The problem with this regime is that we live in a “Who the hell knows” kind of world because they will leak out information on an as-needed basis. The “as-needed” basis will center around whether or not they need to cover their ass somewhere.
It’s pathetic, and it sure as hell isn’t safe.
The Microsoft coincidence
As most of you know by now, Microsoft had a major outage this week, too. This was almost 100% unrelated to the FAA groundout. Many government systems run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, but the flight control system runs on dedicated software, a large portion of which is run by a company called L3Harris.2 L3Harris is Duffy’s current fall guy, but that, too, might change, depending on further leaked information from disgruntled regime minions.
It’s best, and easiest, to ignore conspiracy theories or doomers who say we are under attack.
We are, in a way, but it’s an attack of incompetence. We’ve got two more years of this to look forward to.
We can take comfort in the fact that the FAA was at least smart enough to ground all flights, even though it was a major inconvenience to weekend flyers.
But it’s hard to take comfort in who is running this show.
Duffy’s qualifications as Transportation secretary were never good, but in fairness, that position has been a patronage job for a long time over multiple administrations.
Maybe it’s time to demand just a little more from all administrations, not just crooked ones?
UPDATE
L3Harris, the company responsible for the fiber optic rollout (a legit need), said that 70% of the conversion to fiber optics is complete, which means that this is an ongoing project. I think I’ll stay out of the skies until they’re done, considering who the company is answerable to. They should send us all a phone alert when the project is completed. And tested.
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Footnotes
Hsu, Jeremy. “FAA Expands AI Advice to Manage Air Traffic Congestion across Entire US Airspace.” Ars Technica, November 13, 2026. https://arstechnica.com/features/2026/11/faa-expands-ai-advice-to-manage-air-traffic-congestion-across-entire-us-airspace/.
Skibba, Ramin. “FAA Grounds All U.S. Flights after Air Traffic Control System Becomes ‘Overwhelmed.’” Scientific American, November 13, 2026. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/faa-grounds-all-u-s-flights-days-after-expanding-its-ai-air-traffic-system/.
There's not a whole lot of safety going on down there: food, water, air, flying, infrastructure, transportation, formerly eradicated diseases roaring back to life, coupled with a broken health care system, etc etc etc.
I'd call it a "comedy of errors" but it's more a "tragedy of errors", at this point.
“the problem was caused by a conversion of a copper cable to a fiber optic cable in some “remote” facility.”
That screams zero redundancy. That’s unacceptable, especially since former Sect. of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said the current FAA ATC system runs with four redundancies.
So everything now runs through one choke point ? The AI will need to flow through fiber, not copper.
Untested AI on a non-redundant single fiber cable. What could go wrong ?
Oh, and if I were a hacker, cyber criminal, or unfriendly foreign country, I’d know exactly where to go for maximum affect.