A controller quoted by reporter Anna Giaritelli has challenged the timing implied by officials’ explanation of Friday’s air traffic disruption. The controller said equipment updates ordinarily happen midweek, overnight, when fewer flights are operating.
Giaritelli posted the account at 9:10 p.m. Eastern on Friday, saying she had been speaking with controllers and people at the Federal Aviation Administration. Her post attributed the specific objection to one unnamed controller: “They absolutely do not do that during the day.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin linked patching and newer technology to older equipment being overwhelmed. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said older equipment overloaded while newer switches stayed up.
Her post did not identify a particular maintenance order, the equipment that was being changed or the time work began.
L3Harris, the FAA network contractor, describes maintenance windows and parallel systems among the protections on its telecommunications infrastructure capability page. Those general provisions make the timing and coordination of any change relevant to the inquiry. They do not identify the work performed on November 13 or establish whether a reported software update and an equipment replacement refer to the same activity.
A separate argument about artificial intelligence has also circulated around the failure. Air Space Intelligence, which the FAA selected to supply SMART, publicly denied Friday that the ground stop resulted from SMART, another ASI product or its integration with the FAA and air traffic control. Its statement was posted at 5:34 p.m. Eastern.
The FAA’s two-page SMART fact sheet describes a planning system that brings together airline schedules, weather, airport capacity and airspace conditions. It updates forecasts and recommendations so operators can plan routes and departure times. Controllers remain responsible for keeping aircraft safely separated.
A widely circulated first-person account by Peter Girnus purported to describe asking SMART whether it had grounded the country. Girnus identifies himself as a satirist, and his own About page describes first-person satire. That monologue supplies no verified insider conversation or evidence that he speaks for ASI.
The FAA’s July 2022 procedure for paper maintenance logs calls for dates and times in Coordinated Universal Time, records of maintenance starting and ending, identification of failed or replaced components, and coordination for shutdowns or restoration. It is dated guidance for facilities using paper records; its applicability to Friday’s affected equipment has not been established here.
SnowRock has not obtained the incident’s maintenance logs. A released change history could establish when work began, which equipment it touched and who coordinated taking it out of service. Those details would let readers assess the controller’s account against the actual sequence of Friday’s failure.
