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Transportation secretary Sean Duffy blames prior presidents and Congress for flight stoppage
A four-hour nationwide flight stoppage on Friday delayed or cancelled thousands of flights, after maintenance work on FAA telecommunications equipment went wrong. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy blamed inherited problems and limited congressional funding for weaknesses in the air traffic system, while a Democratic senator argued the administration had not properly used funds already allocated.
Duffy said the $12.5bn provided for upgrades could not pay for new telecommunications architecture, flight-management software or control towers, and said the FAA was investigating the maintenance failure. Contractor L3Harris is conducting diagnostics on two routers; the FAA technicians’ union said its members were not involved in the work. Duffy and Donald Trump said there was no indication of a foreign cyberattack, while Trump blamed the Biden administration and called on Congress to provide more funding.
In short
- A maintenance failure triggered a four-hour nationwide flight stoppage.
- Duffy says existing funds cannot cover major air traffic upgrades.
- A union says FAA technicians were not involved in the router work.
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Originally published by The Guardian as “Transportation secretary Sean Duffy blames prior presidents and Congress for flight stoppage”.