Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy can’t fully explain the flight shutdown but wants football teams moving

After a disastrous White House press conference on Friday left basic questions about the nationwide flight shutdown that left travelers around the world stranded unanswered, President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, tried again on Saturday. The former MTV Real World cast member offered a more specific account, but also more blame for a contractor and Congress, more praise for Trump, and another detour into football logistics, without fully explaining how routine maintenance disrupted aviation in the United States.Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford apologized to travelers and distinguished the maintenance involved from the modernization program Duffy repeatedly promoted.Related: Robert Garcia demands answers as Trump officials offer few details on nationwide ground stop stranding flyersRoutine work with nationwide consequencesThe briefing began with a smaller technology failure of its own. Audio feedback and microphone problems disrupted the setup before Duffy began explaining the telecommunications trouble that had brought departures nationwide to a halt.FAA acting Chief Technology Officer Rebecca Guy offered more detail about the response, saying technicians identified two locations flooding the network with connection attempts and disabled both to stabilize it. Officials also disabled certain functions on roughly 60 deployed routers and were conducting additional testing with L3Harris, a defense and aerospace technology company that owns and operates the FAA’s telecommunications network under a long-running contract.Asked whether officials knew the problem could have such widespread consequences, Guy admitted they didn’t.“We did not, and that is exactly why we want to continue to verify and do analysis as we go forward,” she said.Duffy said L3Harris was replacing copper connections with fiber when a router began generating more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds. The overload, according to him,