Trump pushes Congress for air control cash

President Donald Trump broke his silence on the weekend ground stop on Sunday to demand increased funding from Congress for the nation's air traffic control system.

The ground stop began Friday afternoon, stranding passengers and disrupting travel across the country. Trump remained quiet during the initial disruption, posting about unrelated topics on social media while his administration worked with airlines to restore normal operations.

The incident traces back to infrastructure work by contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. The company replaced old copper wire with new fiber wire at a facility in El Dorado, Arkansas. This change overloaded the system, causing a failure at a router in Amarillo, Texas. The resulting cascade forced a nationwide halt in air travel.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explained the technical failure on NBC's Meet the Press. He said the system suffered from a lack of investment over the past 20 to 30 years. Duffy stated, "I can't apologize for what was passed on to us. And I can't blame Republicans or Democrats, because it's all of them."

Duffy told ABC's This Week that he did not expect the system to fail in that manner. He added that deep diagnostics are currently underway on two routers secured from facilities in Texas and Arkansas.

Trump used the incident to criticize the current state of the Federal Aviation Administration. He noted that much of the air control system is 50 years old. He wrote, "If Congress approves the desperately needed money for Air Traffic Control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently."

The president also criticized the previous administration's handling of the FAA. He claimed Joe Biden's team made an "old and broken system worse than when they began." Biden's administration previously signed a $25 billion infrastructure bill for FAA improvements. The current Congress approved $12.5 billion for the agency as part of a tax cut package last year.

Duffy told CBS' Face the Nation that delays remain in the airspace. He said the agency expects to reach full capacity by Monday. "We have some delays in the airspace right now," Duffy said, noting that crews and aircraft must be repositioned before normal operations resume.