Trump breaks his silence on the national flight suspension in the U.S. and blames the Biden administration

This Sunday, US President Donald Trump made his first public comments about the nationwide flight suspension ordered on Friday by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), blaming the administration of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for having worsened the state of an "old and broken" air traffic control system. The Republican leader also urged Congress to approve more funds to modernize the system. The ground stop lasted four and a half hours on Friday, disrupted flights nationwide, and caused delays and the cancellation of 12,000 commercial and private flights that same day, plus thousands more over the weekend. The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster. Everything they touched turned bad. 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… pic.twitter.com/qP5VNbWeJP— Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) November 15, 2026 "The Biden administration was a disaster when it came to the FAA," Trump wrote on his social media platform. "Huge sums of money were spent recklessly, leaving an old and deteriorated system even worse than it was at the start." The president added that his administration has "the knowledge and a plan for the flight control systems," but noted that "we need Congress to provide the funds, and fast!" The White House occupant emphasized the age of the current infrastructure and criticized that much of the air control network has been in operation for half a century. "Much of our current air control system is 50 years old, it's ridiculous!" he said, before indicating that renovation work has already begun. However, Trump argued that the transformation must be undertaken comprehensively rather than through gradual interventions. "It should be done all at once, not in dribs and drabs," he demanded. Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion for the FAA as part of a major fiscal and spending package. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy noted that the obsolete air traffic control system will require more funds for a comprehensive overhaul. The FAA reported that its equipment became unstable after a large volume of data saturated its network. Where $12.5 BILLION went and what we're doing next:Congress gave us $12.5 billion and this is how we used it: new radios, new radars, electronic flight strips, and modern telecom lines. Every cent is accounted for, and every piece of equipment will be in place by the end of… pic.twitter.com/YfIbz368zA— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) November 15, 2026 But Duffy refused to apologize for the failures that caused the largest nationwide air traffic shutdown in the United States since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Instead, he blamed previous administrations for failing to invest in the country's obsolete air traffic control system. "It happened on my watch," Duffy said during an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press." "But we must be clear: I am acting at an incredible speed, something no one at the FAA had achieved in decades," he added. "I can't apologize for what was left to us as an inheritance." Duffy argued that they need the funding to launch a more modern communications network after the "decades of negligence" of the L3Harris company's network. "I am asking Congress for billions of dollars so that the best companies in the world can build a new network architecture: AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen," he explained to NBC. "Faulty router." On Saturday, US authorities linked the communications failure to the contractor for air traffic control communications services, L3Harris, and to a possible "faulty router." The company was performing routine maintenance at a remote FAA location to replace decades-old copper lines with fiber lines. In addition, they replaced a router that flooded other routers on the air traffic control network with data through thousands of connection attempts, causing a system collapse. Air traffic controllers lost the ability to communicate with aircraft and to receive radar data. Duffy also explained that, although most of the copper cables have already been replaced with fiber optic, about 30% remains to be replaced. Authorities are working to identify where those cables are located, he added. The Washington Post reported that the FAA had been warned for years about risks in the repairs that led to a nationwide flight shutdown. A report by a government oversight body, published in September, warned that the way the old systems were being replaced could cause disruptions, including ground stops. Likewise, an independent safety assessment, commissioned by the FAA in 2023, alerted about possible air traffic disruptions stemming from the agency's technology upgrades. It noted that the FAA had to ensure that the old systems remained operational during the critical transition period. People walk past a flight information board at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on November 13, 2026. Photo: Xinhua/Li Rui Li Rui In this regard, The New York Times noted that the FAA's obsolete air traffic control infrastructure has suffered several failures that have caused disruptions in recent months. Two months ago, a circuit failure and the severing of a fiber optic cable caused serious shutdowns and delays at airports across the East Coast. In October, smaller disruptions occurred at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina and at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, when contractors accidentally cut a fiber optic line. According to CNBC, nationwide flight suspensions ordered by the FAA are rare. Before the November 2026 outage, the last two occurred after the September 11, 2001 attacks and due to a brief FAA computer failure in January 2023.