Trump breaks silence on nationwide ground stop, demands more money for FAA infrastructure from Congress

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday broke his silence on the nationwide ground stop that snarled airline travel this weekend, using the incident to push Congress on money to fully upgrade America’s air traffic control system.

The Republican president, whose party currently controls Congress, also blamed Biden for the aging FAA tech

The Associated Press

· Posted: Nov 15, 2026 12:27 PM EST | Last Updated: 17 minutes ago

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday broke his silence on the nationwide ground stop that snarled airline travel this weekend, using the incident to push Congress on money to fully upgrade America's air traffic control system.

The Republican president has been conspicuously quiet on the ground stop since it began Friday afternoon, instead issuing statements on social media about completely different topics as frustrated passengers were left stranded at airports and his government scrambled with airlines to restore normal travel.

Trump said in a new post on his social media platform that his administration has begun upgrading that system, but that the task should not be done in "drips and drabs."

Congress, which the Republican Party has controlled for nearly two years, approved $12.5 billion US for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as part of the party's sweeping tax cut package last year, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has repeatedly characterized that funding as a down payment on a broader overhaul of the aging system.

"If Congress approves the desperately needed money for Air Traffic Control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently," Trump wrote on social media Sunday. "It will be the BEST SYSTEM anywhere in the World. Much of our current air control system is 50 years old — RIDICULOUS!"

In another post, he complained about how his Democratic predecessor had maintained the FAA and the air traffic control system, accusing Joe Biden's administration of making an "old and broken system worse than when they began."

WATCH | Here's what caused the nationwide ground stop in the U.S.:

Routine maintenance to replace telecom line led to air traffic control outage: U.S. transportation secretary

November 14|

Duration

3:40

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a news conference that a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration was working at a remote location to replace a copper line when an unknown issue overloaded the aging air traffic control system, forcing the FAA to keep planes on the ground nationwide.

Biden signed a massive infrastructure bill into law in the first year of his presidency, which set aside $25 billion US for the FAA to improve airports and its traffic control towers, to redevelop airport terminals and "upgrade the foundation" of the air traffic control system, according to the FAA.

Duffy was the administration’s public face on the ground stop across the Sunday news shows, pressing Congress for billions of dollars for upgrades to the air traffic control infrastructure.

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"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. It goes back 20, 25, 30 years of a lack of investment," he told NBC's Meet the Press.

In a post on the social media platform X, Duffy said contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. had secured two routers from FAA facilities in Texas and Arkansas and was conducting "deep diagnostics" on the equipment. He has said the problem began when L3Harris was replacing a section of old copper wire with new fibre wire, somehow causing the system to overload.

WATCH | Was a lack of funding to blame for the glitch that led to Friday's ground stop?:

Did a lack of funding lead to the order to ground aircraft across the U.S.?

November 14|

Duration

1:31

Several experts who spoke to CBC News say a lack of funding for new technology partially led to the U.S.-wide grounding of aircraft that caused travel chaos across the country and beyond. Former airline pilot and accident investigator John Cox speaks to some of those funding challenges over the decades.

After the wire was replaced at the site in El Dorado, Ark., and the router was turned on, a problem then cropped up at a facility in Amarillo, Texas, cascading into the ground stop. "We didn't think that should or would happen, he told ABC's This Week.

As for the travelling public, Duffy told CBS's Face the Nation that "we have some delays in the airspace right now," but looking to the end of the day and into Monday, "we should be running at full capacity."

In a ground stop, airplanes and crews are taken out of position, he said, "so it takes a little bit of time for the airliners to get back … at full capacity and operation but we're well on our way."