ICYMI: Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Provides Update Across Sunday Shows on Airspace, Outlines Ongoing Investigation, & Push to Finally Finish Air Traffic Control Modernization
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy today joined Fox News Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CNN’s State of the Union, and CBS’s Face the Nation to share updates on the restoration of the U.S. airspace following Friday’s nationwide ground stop. The Secretary also repeatedly underscored the unprecedented work the Trump Administration has done to modernize the system while outlining the need for additional funding to finish the job. Secretary Duffy emphasized America’s airspace remains the safest in the world.
REMINDER: Intermittent issues with telecommunications and radar systems used by Air Traffic Control led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to issue a nationwide ground stop out of an abundance of caution. FAA’s highly trained air traffic controllers and commercial pilots followed established protocols as they safely and efficiently grounded over 3,500 flights swiftly. Flights have since resumed and delays and cancellations should continue to decrease.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- The FAA’s groundstop on Friday, November 13, 2026, was taken out of an abundance of caution because the safety of the American people is our number one priority.
- The FAA lifted the ground stop on Friday evening after isolating the telecommunications issue and ensuring the safety of the airspace.
- The routers related to Friday’s issues are undergoing diagnostics in L3Harris’s laboratories right now with engineers on site.
- Instead of kicking the can down the road, the Trump Administration has been modernizing our nation’s air traffic control system at record speed.
- Every dollar of the $12.5 billion awarded by Congress through the Working Families Tax Cut Act for USDOT’s modernization efforts is accounted for—but this was only a down payment and not enough to fully fund the upgrades needed.
- What occurred Friday happened during contractor routine maintenance of the FAA's legacy network.
- The Trump Administration, stakeholders, and aviation experts have repeatedly made it clear that additional funding is needed to get the job done.
Read excerpts from Secretary Duffy’s interviews below…
Secretary Duffy on the latest updates on the issue that impacted Air Traffic Control:
“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…The FBI has offered assistance. President Trump actually had the whole government on the phone on Friday…Was this a cyber attack from a foreign nation? We have no indication that that was at play here. We think it was the installation or the router that was the bad actor, but we’re open if we see something else we are going to continue to investigate with our federal partners and law enforcement. But at this point, we do not think [a cyber attack] was the cause; it was the router or the installation.”
Secretary Duffy on finding the issue’s root cause:
“So, the work was being done in El Dorado, Arkansas. This was replacing an old copper wire, which by the way, was going to be discontinued. They were going to shut the line down, so we had to do this work. When we turned that router on, we saw that in Amarillo, Texas, a system [L3Harris] had replaced about three weeks earlier, that started to flood our system as well. So, we're looking at those two issues and trying to find the root cause of what happened. And I don't want to give information before we're certain. That's why we have to go through this investigation and determine why this happened in our network.”
Secretary Duffy on the routine work done to maintain FAA’s aging legacy network:
“Well, we understand the age of the network. And the work that was done on Friday, that's been done thousands of times by L3Harris in our network. It's been done thousands of times by other companies, and these issues haven't arisen, and so that's why we have to figure out what went wrong here. Now, on these routers. This router was broadcasting. And when it broadcast, it was shooting off this data to all of our other routers in the system. By the way, the routers that were experiencing issues, those routers were purchased in 2001, they were obsolete in 2006, and we still use them in 2026, just to underscore how old the network is. And the mission we have is to fix it.”
Secretary Duffy on the $12.5 billion downpayment for modernization from Congress:
“Congress did give me $12.5 billion, but they were very specific on how we spend it. I’ve got money for radars, I’ve got money from radios. I can’t order and take this stuff off the shelf. This is a massive order from our providers. They have to build radios, they have to build radar, they have to build electronic flight strips. So, this money is all accounted for. It will 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 air space. So, it's interesting when they say I have all this money, yes, but they said specifically how I had to use that money. I need additional money to do the additional work to keep the airspace safe.”
Secretary Duffy on the FAA’s readiness to continue modernizing:
“I have systems that are from the 90’s. I have radars that are from the 60’s and 70’s. I gotta tell you, what I have, I take responsibility for what was given to me by prior administrations, and now, I’ll tell you how I’m going to fix it. I’m already replacing radar and radios, we’re putting in voice switches. We’re doing all this work with the $12.5 billion. But one of the biggest problems we continue to see is our network, and the architecture of our network is from 1980. We need modern technology and architecture. I have AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen all ready to go. We have the architecture ready to build a state of the art telecom system that will give us resiliency. All I need is the money to finish it. My hope is if they give me money today, I’ll be going tomorrow to build it and this telecom system would be ready by the end of 2028, the first part of 2029.”
Secretary Duffy on the 2026 Government Accountability Office Report:
“So, first off, the GAO has also said, and it said this for over five or seven years, that this system is going to start to show its age and it has to be modernized… So they have said both things…And so what I have done is said, listen, I need to build fast, but the number one priority is to build safely, which is what we're doing.”
- REMINDER: 2024 GAO Report (Air Traffic Control: FAA Actions Are Urgently Needed to Modernize Aging Systems)
- “The Federal Aviation Administration relies on information systems to help air traffic controllers keep the airspace safe and efficient. Last year, FAA determined that 51 of its 138 systems are unsustainable, citing outdated functionality, a lack of spare parts, and more. Over half of these unsustainable systems are especially concerning, but FAA has been slow to modernize. Some system modernization projects won't be complete for another 10-13 years. FAA also doesn't have plans to modernize other systems in need—3 of which are at least 30 years old.”
- REMINDER: After Republicans passed the Working Families Tax Cut in July 2025, the Department began deploying $12.5B in upgrades – significantly enhancing the safety of the airspace.
- Replaced 70% of copper telecommunications lines with high-speed fiber.
- Deployed Surface Awareness Initiative technology at 143 control towers.
- Converted 469 radio sites to modernized systems.
- Installed electronic flight strips at 25 towers.
- Installed 224 IP Voice Switch systems at towers.
- Installed 18 new tower simulation systems.
- Installed nine SMR4 Surface Movement Radars.
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