Flight disruptions across the United States could continue until Monday, the Donald Trump administration has warned, as efforts to restore normal air travel following a nationwide ground stop face further delays.
Hundreds of additional flights were cancelled on Sunday, leaving travellers stranded and raising concerns over the state of the country’s ageing air traffic control infrastructure.
Officials attributed Friday’s major disruption to a faulty upgrade of air traffic control communication cables, which reportedly involved the replacement of old copper wire lines.
US President Donald Trump broke his silence on the disruption on Sunday, blaming his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the state of the country’s aviation infrastructure. He also called on Congress to approve funding for the modernisation of the air traffic control system.
“The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster,” Trump said, referring to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Everything they touched turned bad. Big money spent unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began,” Trump asserted.
The FAA chief, Bryan Bedford, had earlier said on Saturday that air travel for millions of affected passengers would return to normal by the close of business on Sunday.
However, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the recovery would take longer, as airlines struggled to reposition aircraft, crews and passengers affected by the disruption.
“So, in the airspace, we’re going to see things come back to normal today, but probably fully normal tomorrow,” Duffy said on ABC News.
“We had airplanes and crews out of position because of Friday, so it takes a little bit of time to do that.”
As of Sunday morning, 1,460 flights within, into or out of the United States had been cancelled, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.
Duffy rejects calls to resign
Duffy also dismissed calls for his resignation over the disruption, arguing that he inherited an outdated air traffic control system that requires urgent modernisation.
He cited radar equipment dating back to the 1960s as an example of the infrastructure challenges facing the aviation sector.
“So when we do work and things go wrong, of course I’m the secretary. But I also have to acknowledge what was delivered to me,” Duffy said in an interview on CNN.
The Friday ground stop, which prevented aircraft from taking off, was reportedly only the second such occurrence in US airspace since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The incident disrupted air travel across one of the world’s busiest aviation networks and renewed concerns about the reliability of the country’s ageing infrastructure.
Duffy has appealed for $50bn in funding to overhaul and modernise the air traffic control system, urging Congress to approve the necessary resources.
He called on lawmakers to “meet this moment.”
However, Democrats criticised the administration, arguing that Republicans, who have controlled Congress under Trump for two years, could have already addressed the infrastructure challenges.
