The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the responsibility for the recent “disaster” at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an incident that on Friday led to widespread delays and the cancellation of more than 9,000 flights across the country.
“The Biden Administration was a disaster for the FAA. Everything they touched got worse. A lot of money was spent without judgment to make worse a system that was already old and failing,” Trump said in a message posted on social media, where he has gone after the previous management.
In the same intervention, the president has defended that his team is already working on a structural solution for air traffic control. “We have a plan for flight control systems. We need the Congress to approve the money, quickly! The FAA is doing a great job and it’s ready,” he added, calling for political backing and economic resources.
Trump calls on Congress for urgent funding to modernize the FAA
In a subsequent post, Trump has doubled down on pressure on the Capitol and has underlined the urgency of authorizing the funds “so badly needed” for the modernization of the air traffic control system, which he considers obsolete.
The president has argued that, with the proper budget, his Administration could move the project forward “quickly and efficiently” until turning the U.S. network into “the best system in the world.” He has insisted that the goal is a deep reform and not simple tweaks.
The occupant of the White House has highlighted the age of the current infrastructure and has pointed out that much of the air control network has been operating for half a century. “A large part of our current air traffic control system is 50 years old; it’s ridiculous!” he said, while adding that renovation work has already begun.
However, he has defended that the transformation must be carried out as a global project and not through partial actions. “It should be done all at once, not drip by drip,” he demanded, insisting on the need for a complete reform.
Along the same lines, Trump has again launched attacks on the Biden Democratic Government, which he blames for having slowed down the update of these key infrastructures. “The Congress must approve it! The Biden Administration has delayed it for years!” he denounced, criticizing the opposition’s attitude.
Plan for a new air communications system
The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has expressed himself in similar terms by emphasizing that they need funding to deploy a more modern communications network after the "decades of negligence" accumulated in the infrastructure managed by the company L3Harris.
"We need to put money in so that it is resilient in the future (...). I'm asking Congress for thousands of millions of dollars so that the best companies in the world build a new network architecture: AT&T, Verizon and Lumen", he explained in statements to the NBC network, defending the involvement of major private operators.
According to Duffy, the design of the new network "is already ready". "These companies are prepared to put it into operation starting tomorrow. I just need the money to tell them to start and that it be built in the coming years", he added, stressing that the project could begin immediately if the funds are unlocked.
The Transport official, however, pointed to the current legal limitations. "I want to set aside L3Harris and get a new one, but the ownership of the network is theirs. I can't cancel the network they already have", he argued, referring to the ongoing contracts with the company.
For his part, Duffy admitted that we still "have to find out what happened" when asked whether he can guarantee that Friday's air chaos will not be repeated. Also asked about the possibility of asking for forgiveness for what happened, he replied: "I can't apologize for something that is given to us."
On Saturday, U.S. authorities linked the communications failure to the contractor company of the air traffic control communications services, L3Harris, and to a possible "defective router" as the technical origin of the incident.
According to the official version, the company was carrying out routine maintenance work at a remote Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility to replace old copper lines, used for decades, with new fiber-optic lines.
In that process, a router that ended up saturating with data other routers of the air traffic control network through thousands of connection attempts, which triggered the collapse of the system. As a result, air controllers were no longer able to communicate with the aircraft and stopped receiving radar information.
In parallel, the FAA has laid off about 400 employees out of the 45,000 it had, as part of the cuts pushed by the Trump Administration through the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, for its acronym in English), led by the billionaire Elon Musk. The Democratic opposition has warned that these staffing adjustments could have a negative impact on air safety.