The FAA ground stop hit L3Harris stock harder than any airline

L3Harris fell 4.2% after hours on Friday. JetBlue, the worst airline, fell 2.9%. The company that news reports say runs the network at the center of the outage took a bigger hit than any carrier whose planes sat on the ground.

What failed, and who runs it

The FAA halted all US departures at 3:54pm ET and lifted the stop at 8:15pm ET, more than four hours later. Al Jazeera called it the longest ground stop in 25 years and, citing Flightradar24, counted more than 4,700 cancellations and 10,000 delays on Friday.

Neither the FAA nor L3Harris has confirmed the cause. The accounts so far, by source:

• The FAA called it a "temporary telecommunications outage" (CNBC).
• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said switches and routers were "overloaded with data" and pointed to "1980s little copper lines" (ABC News, Al Jazeera).
• Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said new security patches appeared to overwhelm old routers, that there was no sign of a cyberattack though nothing had been ruled out, and that there was "no connection between this and Microsoft" (CBS News, ABC News).
• CBS News sources said an update to the private network that links air traffic facilities caused a reboot and a crash. That network, the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI), has been run by L3Harris since 2002.
• The Wall Street Journal, citing people briefed on the matter, said the outage "appears to be affecting a telecommunications network overseen by L3Harris."

L3Harris had not commented by the time the after-hours session ended.

FAA ground stop stocks: the after-hours moves

The stop began six minutes before the closing bell, so Friday's closes barely priced it. The reaction came in after-hours trading. Prices below run from Friday's close to 7:59pm ET (Stock Analysis).

Two caveats apply to this table. The after-hours session ended at 8:00pm, 16 minutes before the FAA lifted the stop, so no price in it reflects the all-clear. The airlines also had a worse day before any of this: on Thursday, November 12, United closed down 6.0%, American 5.6% and Delta 5.2%. We have not verified what drove that drop.

Who gets paid to fix it

The FAA had already hired companies to rebuild its telecom network and replace its radars, and the contracts are public.

• AT&T won a $74.3 million initial task order in August 2026 to lead the network rebuild, a deal that could run 15 years and reach billions. It replaced Verizon as prime contractor; Verizon keeps core functions (Nextgov, Aviation Week).
• RTX and Indra are replacing 612 radars by 2028 (Fortune).
• Duffy and Mullin want roughly $50 billion from Congress for a full replacement (CBS News).

What the public filings showed

Months before Friday, public filings already tied L3Harris and RTX to FAA network spending. This is the alternative data side of the story. None of the entries below says anything about the outage.

Lobbying. L3Harris's in-house lobbying reports list "programs related to FAA NextGen and network modernization" under the 2027 transportation appropriations bill, in both Q2 2026 and Q3 2026. Those reports show $530,000 and $510,000 in in-house lobbying spend, and those totals cover every issue L3Harris lobbied on, not the FAA alone. RTX pays an outside firm, O'Keeffe Shahmoradi Strategies, $50,000 a quarter for "Air Traffic Control (ATC) modernization and FAA appropriations" (Q3 2026 report).

Insider filings. L3Harris CEO Christopher Kubasik filed five Form 144 notices between October 30 and November 10, covering 70,064 shares worth about $19.3 million (first, last). They followed the stock's earnings jump on October 29, from $260.61 to $278.43. A Form 144 is a notice of a proposed sale, not a record of one. Our data does not show whether a pre-arranged trading plan covers these notices, and nothing suggests any link to the outage. For how insider filings fit together, see what insider buying is.

What tracked investors were discussing

The conversation we track was elsewhere; the paper trail was in the filings.

Over the past 30 days, the posts we track on L3Harris were about missile propulsion and space, most of them from TheValueist. Posts on AT&T and Verizon were about the threat from SpaceX's spectrum plans. On the airlines, the clearest thesis came from TheValueist, an account with a strong graded record, on unhedged jet fuel costs, ranking Delta the most resilient of the big carriers because it owns a refinery.

Investors write about what moves a company's earnings, and before Friday an FAA network failure was not on that list for any of these names. For a government contractor, the Washington side of the business sits in lobbying reports and SEC filings.

How airline stocks took past outages

Our price data covers two recent precedents.

In those two cases, investors shrugged off the outage that hit every carrier at once and sold the airline whose own systems failed. This time the outage is system-wide for the airlines, and one contractor's name is attached to it.

What to watch on Monday

1. The official cause. Whether the FAA confirms what failed, and whether L3Harris comments.
2. L3Harris's open. Whether Friday's 4.2% after-hours drop holds, grows or reverses in the regular session.
3. The airlines against Thursday. Whether Monday's move is smaller or larger than the 5% to 6% drops of November 12.
4. AT&T and the funding push. Whether talk of the roughly $50 billion replacement moves AT&T, which leads the rebuild.
5. Congress. Whether hearings get scheduled, and what the FY2027 transportation bill ends up funding.

Try it

Follow L3Harris, AT&T and the airlines as the cause comes out, with every tracked post, lobbying report and insider filing in one place. Quantral is an investment ideas app built on alternative data, on the web at app.quantral.com, on iOS and on Android, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan. For how one stock's news moves its neighbors, see what a sympathy move is.

Regular-session prices are daily closes through November 13, 2026. After-hours moves run from the November 13 close to 7:59pm ET. Lobbying figures are from Lobbying Disclosure Act reports and insider figures from SEC Form 144 filings, linked above. The cause of the outage is as reported by the outlets named and has not been confirmed by the FAA. Positions attributed to accounts are their views, not Quantral's.

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