Duffy Demands $50 Billion to Replace ‘1980s’ Air Traffic Equipment as Cancellations Spill Into Saturday
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is demanding $50 billion in emergency funding from Congress to rebuild the nation’s air traffic control system, as fallout from Friday’s nationwide ground stop canceled thousands more flights Saturday.
More than 3,700 U.S. flights were canceled Saturday and close to 2,000 were delayed as of 9:40 a.m. ET, CNBC reported. That followed about 9,000 cancellations and more than 7,000 delays Friday, though some were weather-related.
Airlines were working to recover from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, the Associated Press reported. The stop forced many planes to divert to other airports, and airlines must reposition them before the Thanksgiving rush, CNBC said.
The Federal Aviation Administration halted departures nationwide shortly before 4 p.m. ET Friday and lifted the order at about 8:15 p.m., as Conservative Daily News reported. It was only the second nationwide ground stop since Sept. 11, 2001.
At a White House news conference Friday night, Duffy blamed aging equipment. “We have old, old switches, old routers. We use 1980s little copper lines,” he said, Fox Business reported.
Duffy said the FAA began seeing instability in its radar and communications systems around 3:36 p.m. ET. He said switches and routers became overloaded with data and sent inconsistent information to controllers, so officials shut the system down.
“What went down was old, right? It was the old legacy equipment. It failed,” Duffy said. He added that newer equipment installed under the Trump administration did not fail.
Then came the request. “This is an emergency. I want Congress to give us emergency funding,” Duffy said. “This is bipartisan. This is American. I want $50 billion.”
Duffy noted that President Donald Trump had earlier asked for $30 billion, The Hill reported. “Let’s finish this job: new hardware, new software, new telecommunication,” he said.
Congress has already approved $12.5 billion for modernization, Fox Business noted. That includes a nearly $5 billion contract awarded in April to Rohde and Schwarz USA to replace up to 462 outdated voice communication switches.
Duffy warned that the problem will return without a full overhaul. “You will have more of these. You will have more of them unless the American people and the Congress tell us to build,” he said, ABC News reported.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin backed the request. “It has to be a complete overhaul of the system,” he said, according to The Hill. Officials said there was no indication of a cyberattack.
Duffy also rejected online speculation that the FAA’s new AI traffic-management tool, known as SMART, caused the outage. “This is completely disconnected,” he said, adding that the system “isn’t plugged in.”
The disruption scrambled travel for NBA, NHL and college teams, and the Southeastern Conference moved some games to Sunday, CNBC reported. Duffy said college football charter flights could get priority.
Airlines are running one of their lightest schedules of the week Saturday and deploying spare planes and crews to catch up, CNBC said. About 3 million people would typically be scheduled to fly on Saturday.
Duffy said Friday it would “take us some time to get back to capacity,” ABC News reported. Travelers are being urged to check flight status with their airline before heading to the airport.
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