Donald Trump has blamed Joe Biden’s administration for the nationwide FAA ground stop that halted flights across the US, arguing that the country’s air traffic control system requires urgent investment.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued the order at about 4pm EST on Friday November 13, directing flights at all airports not to take off “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety”.
The restriction was lifted roughly four hours later after technicians were reportedly able to stabilise a telecommunications network outage affecting air traffic control centres.
Writing on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump said: “The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster. Everything they touched turned bad.”
He added: “Big money spent unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began. We have the knowledge and plan for the Flight Control Systems, we need Congress to give the money, FAST! Our FAA is doing a great job, and is ready to go.”
Thousands of flights disrupted by FAA ground stop
More than 4,700 flights were cancelled and 10,000 delayed as a result of the stoppage. A further 700 flights were cancelled on Saturday, with airlines still working to establish what had happened.
Trump later called on Congress to approve funding for a major overhaul of air traffic control. “If Congress approves the desperately needed money for Air Traffic Control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently,” he wrote.
“It will be the BEST SYSTEM anywhere in the World. Much of our current air control system is 50 years old – RIDICULOUS! We have already started the work, but it should be done all at once, not in drips and drabs. Congress must approve.”
The outage has been attributed to telecommunications problems. Duffy has blamed outdated air traffic control technology and overloaded routers, and called for $50 billion to be spent on upgrades.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was “zero evidence” of a cyber attack, adding that the incident was not caused by a threat to the US and was unrelated to the Microsoft outage.
