The Federal Aviation Administration says outdated infrastructure is to blame for an unexpected ground stop on Friday at Dallas’ two major airports.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 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The outage is a “clear example of the FAA’s outdated infrastructure and underscores the urgent need to modernize our air traffic control systems,” the FAA said.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.