U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a midterm campaign rally at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, October 30, 2026.
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Sunday made his first public comments on Friday’s nationwide ground shutdown by the Federal Aviation Administration, accusing the Biden administration of making an “old and broken” air traffic control system worse. Trump also urged Congress to approve more funding to modernize the system.
The ground stop lasted more than four hours Friday, disrupting flights nationwide, contributing to thousands of cancellations and delays and affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
“The Biden administration has been a disaster for the FAA,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “Large sums of money spent recklessly, making an old and failing system worse than when it started.”
The president added that his administration has “the knowledge and the plan for flight control systems” but said that “we need Congress to give the money, FAST!”
Congress last year approved $12.5 billion for the FAA as part of a major spending and tax package. Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said the aging air traffic control system would need more funding for a wider overhaul.
The FAA said its equipment became unstable after a large volume of data flooded its network. The agency said a contractor’s work at a site could be linked and the underlying cause was still under investigation.
Nationwide FAA ground stops are rare. Before the November 2026 shutdown, the last two occurred after the September 11 attacks and a brief FAA IT outage in January 2023.
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