US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has refused to apologise for Friday’s nationwide flight ground stop, blaming decades of underinvestment in America’s air traffic control system.
According to NBC News, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted departing flights for several hours after a router problem disrupted communications, leaving hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded.
Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Duffy acknowledged the disruption occurred under his leadership but blamed previous administrations.
“But I can’t apologize for what was passed off to us, and I can’t blame Republicans or Democrats because it’s all of them,” he said.
The outage reportedly began when FAA contractor L3Harris was replacing a copper telecommunications line with fibre at a remote facility, causing a router to overwhelm the network.
The exact cause remains under investigation.
Duffy said airlines could return to normal operations by Monday after thousands of cancellations left aircraft and crews out of position.
He also called for additional congressional funding to modernise outdated air traffic control infrastructure.
The Trump administration has requested $30.1 billion for upgrades, including telecommunications networks, software and airport facilities.
Duffy declined to guarantee that a similar disruption would not happen again, saying officials must first establish what caused the failure.
