Trump Administration Blames Prior Administrations and Funding for FAA Flight Stoppage
The Trump administration on Sunday blamed the travel disruption caused by Friday's four-hour nationwide ground stop of U.S. flights on prior presidents and on a lack of congressional funding. A ground stop is an order that halts flights bound for a given area or airports, and this one was issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the federal agency that manages air traffic.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN's Dana Bash that he takes responsibility for what he called the system he was handed by earlier administrations. In the same interview, he said routine maintenance that a contractor botched caused Friday's stop, which delayed or canceled thousands of flights. He said the work involved replacing telephone lines carrying air traffic communications, switching from old copper wire to fiber optic cables. Duffy said that kind of work had been done "thousands of times" without issues.
Speaking to CBS News' Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation, Duffy said the FAA was investigating the root cause of the botched maintenance.
On funding, Duffy argued that the $12.5 billion Congress approved was limited in scope and far from enough for upgrades to air traffic control. He said it included no money for new telecommunications architecture, none to replace 1990s-era software used to manage aircraft in the sky, and none for control towers.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland responded on CNN that Congress had given the administration what it asked for on airspace funding. "If they need more, they should come up and justify it," he said. "I will support what is necessary to have a safe system and a reliable system."
President Donald Trump addressed the stoppage on Truth Social on Sunday. He wrote that "The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster. Everything they touched turned bad," and that "we need Congress to give the money, FAST!" for flight control systems. Duffy defended the timing of the president's remarks, which came two days after the stoppage, and said Trump had been fully engaged and tracking the response behind the scenes.
The ground stop was described as the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years. Its cause, the cost of fixing the system and how the funding dispute will be resolved in Congress remain under discussion between the administration and lawmakers.
