Ground stops across airports in the US Northeast on Monday have prompted the Airforwarders Association (AfA) to call on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to implement recommendations contained in a United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report aimed at strengthening the resilience of US aviation communications systems.
The disruption lasted approximately seven hours and followed an equipment outage at Philadelphia air traffic control, combined with a cable serving a backup system that was cut by construction workers in New Jersey.
Philadelphia International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport were among those affected. The disruption resulted in more than 7,000 flights being delayed or cancelled.
The incident has also renewed attention on the broader modernization of the US air traffic control system. According to PBS, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is seeking an additional US$20 billion from Congress to fund the next phase of the overhaul.
Although the GAO report primarily focuses on cybersecurity and signal-related threats rather than the physical infrastructure damage reported during Monday’s disruption, the AfA is using the findings to highlight weaknesses in the protection and resilience of aviation communications systems.
“The FAA has identified serious threats to critical aviation systems, but this report makes clear that it has not completed the basic risk assessments or built the monitoring needed to address them,” said Brandon Fried, Executive Director of the Airforwarders Association.
“That is not good enough when the threats facing aviation are becoming more sophisticated, and the consequences of failure can spread across airports, airlines, freight networks, and the wider economy.”
The GAO found that the FAA had not completed risk and mitigation assessments for identified spectrum-related threats, including spoofing and jamming. It also found that the agency lacked a defined capability to continuously monitor and detect those threats.
The scale of the potential impact extends well beyond passenger aviation. According to Port Authority data, the three major New York airports affected by the outage handled more than 2.2 million tons of cargo last year, underlining their importance to freight networks and the wider economy.
“While Monday’s disruption was not reported as a cyberattack, it showed how quickly problems with critical communications infrastructure can cascade across the aviation system,” Fried said.
“We cannot afford to wait for a malicious actor to exploit a weakness before treating resilience as an urgent priority.”
The GAO issued nine recommendations addressing areas including risk management, threat monitoring, information sharing, authentication and data protection. The Department of Transportation has agreed with all nine recommendations.
“The FAA now has a clear set of recommendations and no reason to wait, it must now close these gaps before they are exploited and invest in our aging infrastructure,” Fried said.
The Airforwarders Association said it has committed to working with the Department of Transportation and the FAA to ensure that the GAO’s recommendations are fully implemented.
