Trump blames Biden admin for FAA outage debacle — as he repeats Duffy’s call to spend billions on upgrades

President Trump blamed the Biden administration for a nationwide FAA outage that grounded flights on Friday, while backing a large-scale overhaul of the country’s ageing air-traffic-control system. The disruption stranded more than 1.5 million travellers and caused cancellations into the weekend; Trump said Congress should fund a rapid, comprehensive upgrade.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has asked Congress for $50 billion, up from his September request for $30 billion, on top of $12.5 billion approved last year. The FAA halted departures nationwide for more than four hours, its longest such stoppage since the 11 September 2001 attacks. Officials said a failed telecommunications upgrade by contractor L3Harris overloaded routers; up to 17 of 22 air-route control centres were affected, with no evidence of a deliberate attack.