Trump Presses Congress to Fund New Air Traffic Control After Nationwide Ground Stop
The FAA halted all U.S. departures for more than four hours Friday over an outage blamed on aging systems; disruptions lingered into Sunday.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Sunday called on Congress to fund a new U.S. air traffic control system, seizing on the fallout from a rare nationwide ground stop that halted flights across the country two days earlier.
Trump backed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's push for tens of billions of dollars, saying that more money is needed "FAST!" and that his administration was pressing lawmakers, CNN reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued the ground stop for all U.S. airports on Friday afternoon after communication problems hit multiple air traffic control centers. The agency lifted the order more than four hours later, around 8:30 p.m. ET, USA TODAY reported.
Outdated technology blamed
Duffy said aging equipment caused the outage. He told reporters at the White House that the FAA began detecting instability in radar and communications systems at traffic control centers at 3:36 p.m. ET, and that switches and routers were "overloaded" within the system's analog technology.
"What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system," Duffy said, per USA TODAY.
CNN reported Duffy attributed the stoppage to upgrade work to replace old copper wiring at an air traffic facility in El Dorado, Arkansas. He said he wanted to "get away" from the contractor involved, L3Harris, but could not because the company "decades ago, got the contract to run and own the network that operates communication for the FAA." Duffy named AT&T, Verizon and Lumen as having the architecture ready for a replacement network.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no sign of an attack. "There is no prior indication as of yet that this was nefarious attack against us," he said, adding that the public "was never at danger."
Disruption lingers
Airlines canceled more than 1,500 flights within, into or out of the United States by 10 a.m. EST Sunday, CNN reported, citing the tracking service FlightAware. The network said fewer flights were disrupted Sunday than on Saturday as carriers resumed normal schedules.
Political fight ahead
Democrats on two House panels that oversee aviation said federal officials would brief them Monday on Duffy's funding request, CNN reported. Democrats have signaled willingness to fund the department but skepticism about how existing allocations have been spent.