Trump blames Biden for FAA air traffic control outage that grounded US flights

A communications failure halts US flights

A communications failure at the Federal Aviation Administration forced a nationwide ground stop on Friday, 13 November, leaving air traffic controllers unable to reach aircraft or receive radar data. The number of disrupted flights depends on the count: one tally puts more than 9,000 flights delayed or cancelled on Friday, while another counts more than 14,000 cancelled across Friday and Saturday, with 900 more cancelled by Sunday morning. A separate figure puts Saturday's cancellations above 6,000. Travelers were stranded at airports across the country while the halt lasted.

The contractor and the router

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Saturday, 14 November, that the halt was caused either by bad equipment or by human error while a contractor was working on the system. The contractor, L3Harris, was carrying out routine maintenance at a remote FAA site, swapping decades-old copper lines for fiber. A router that was replaced flooded other routers in the air traffic control network with thousands of connection attempts, and the network collapsed. Controllers lost contact with aircraft and their radar feeds. Duffy said officials were investigating whether contractor incompetence or a faulty router was to blame.

Trump's delayed response

Trump did not address the outage publicly until Sunday, 15 November, more than a day and a half after the ground stop began. Before that, on Friday, 13 November, he posted on Truth Social in the evening, at 5.52pm, about bringing the entertainment industry back to the United States. On Saturday, 14 November, he criticised a federal judge who had temporarily halted renovation work on a Washington golf course. On Sunday he wrote in a Truth Social post that the Biden administration had been a disaster for the FAA.

“Everything they touched turned bad.”

Trump also said that the existing air traffic control system is largely 50 years old and that work had already started, but that the overhaul should be finished as a whole rather than in pieces.

Funding request and congressional pushback

Duffy asked Congress for $30 billion in a letter on Thursday, 12 November, before the ground stop. On Friday, 13 November, he said he had requested $50 billion. On Saturday he said he was trying to reach a figure he believed Congress would give, and that a full, itemized request would follow the next week. Trump's Sunday posts pressed Congress to approve the money quickly.

2026-11-1230

2026-11-1350

2026-11-12

30 USD billion

2026-11-13

50 USD billion

Data from the article text

In a second post he wrote that a funded system could be built quickly and efficiently.

“It will be the BEST SYSTEM anywhere in the World.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois and ranking member of the Senate aviation subcommittee, criticised Duffy's comments on the funding request, and Democratic lawmakers have questioned the rising amount.

Staff cuts and safety warnings

The FAA has dismissed about 400 of its 45,000 workers as part of cuts driven by the Trump administration, which were carried out in the context of the Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk. Democratic opposition has warned that these dismissals could affect aviation safety. Federal aviation officials had warned for years that the push to modernize the system risked pushing it to a breaking point. On CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, 15 November, Duffy said he was in constant contact with the president, who he said was fully engaged.

“He was fully engaged because this is important to him and it's important to America.”