Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was asked about backup air traffic control systems, and outages at Newark Airport.
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00:00Sam O'Gazalek of Politico. You mentioned the backup system at the Philly Tracon and then also a software patch on Friday.
00:07Are those the same things or can you distinguish what the differences are, if there are any?
00:12So, do I want to take this? Do I want to go? I'll try it and then if I get it.
00:17So, because the telecom is so fast coming in and we have to slow it down,
00:27when the primary line went down and we switched to the backup line,
00:34the system we have in place was not adequately slowing down the feed.
00:42And so it overloaded that line and it went down.
00:46But again, we are trying to slow speeds down to 1990 speeds for 1980 equipment.
00:56So, we're going to build new high-speed resilient fiber lines,
01:02but we also then need technology from today that can take the speeds.
01:08And so, because they're mismatched, the second line got overloaded and went down.
01:14That's what happened both two weeks ago and on Friday morning.
01:20Did I get that right, Frank? Am I close?
01:22So, is the backup system operational right now? I know the software patch has been switched.
01:28So, the software patch actually worked on Sunday morning.
01:31So, that's why we didn't lose radar, we didn't lose telecom on Sunday morning.
01:36But the primary line went down and when that happened the prior two times,
01:40the whole system went down for 30 seconds.
01:42So, the controllers were concerned and that's why they did a ground stop for 45 minutes.
01:47However, we didn't lose telecom and we didn't lose scopes this Sunday.
01:51The backup line and the fix worked.
01:54So, the backup line was functioning the way it is supposed to.
01:57Does that make sense?
01:58Yeah.
01:58Okay.