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US President Donald Trump has called on Congress to rapidly approve funding for modernising the nations air traffic control infrastructure, while accusing the previous Joe Biden administration of mishandling the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and praising current agency leadership.
In a series of posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump sharply criticised what he described as the Biden administration's oversight of aviation systems, alleging that past spending failed to fix outdated infrastructure and delayed modernisation efforts. "The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster. Everything they touched turned bad. Big money spent unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began," Trump wrote in an initial post. Expanding on the state of the nation's aviation infrastructure in a follow-up message, Trump pointed to the age of existing equipment and contended that a comprehensive, single-phase upgrade is necessary rather than piecemeal funding. "Much of our current air control system is 50 years old - RIDICULOUS! We have already started the work, but it should be done all at once, not in drips and drabs. Congress must approve. The Biden Administration set it back years!" he stated. Shifting focus to his administration's current strategy, Trump maintained that federal aviation officials already have a blueprint in place to modernise flight control operations and urged lawmakers on Capitol Hill to act without delay. "We have the knowledge and plan for the Flight Control Systems; we need Congress to give the money, FAST! Our FAA is doing a great job, and is ready to go," he wrote, adding that with congressional backing, officials could build what he described as "the BEST SYSTEM anywhere in the World" quickly and efficiently. His remarks come as USTransportation Secretary Sean Duffy reiterated that federal investigators believe either a faulty router or an installation error at a remote facility, rather than a foreign cyberattack, caused the network disruption that forced a nationwide ground stop on Friday, even as air travel began recovering with falling cancellation rates at major hubs like Reagan National Airport over the past 24 hours. In an interview with Fox News, Duffy provided an update on the ongoing probe, explaining that defence contractor L3Harris has secured two routers from remote Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities in Texas and Arkansas for deep diagnostic testing at its headquarters in Florida, alongside engineers from the FAA, Juniper, and Cisco. "We have the router. It's at the L3Harris lab in Florida with FAA staff. We are doing a full review of the router and the process that was used in El Dorado, Texas," Duffy said. Duffy noted that President Donald Trump convened a whole-of-government call on Friday to determine whether intelligence agencies detected any foreign digital footprints or chatter, while the FBI continues to assist in the investigation. "We have no indication that was at play here. We think it was the installation or the router that was the bad actor," Duffy said, adding that investigators remain open to any new evidence. Defending the decision to halt flights across the country on Friday, Duffy stressed that passenger safety dictated the immediate shutdown of the airspace once network anomalies appeared. "We took the extraordinary measure of issuing a ground stop. And I want everyone to be clear in America that my number-one priority is to make sure that you get to your destination safely," he told Fox News. "And when we have inconsistencies in our network, we're going to shut it down." Duffy also used the incident to renew calls for Congress to approve additional funds to overhaul core air traffic control software and networks, arguing that existing appropriations are strictly earmarked for physical hardware. According to Duffy, Congress previously allocated $12.5 billion to the department, which is fully committed to ordering custom-built physical equipment, including new radios, radars, electronic flight strips, and modern telecom lines, all scheduled for deployment by the end of 2028. "Congress did give me twelve and a half billion dollars, but they're very specific on how we spend it. So, I've got money for radar, I've got money for radios. I can't order and take the stuff off the shelf," Duffy said. "So, this money is all accounted for. It'll all be deployed by the end of 2028. But I have no money for a new network. I don't have any new money to build new software to separate planes in the airspace." He emphasised that legislative backing for the remaining software and network infrastructure is essential to fully modernise US airspace and prevent a repeat of Friday's travel disruptions. (ANI)
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