US President Donald Trump on Sunday urged Congress to fund a new air traffic control network, two days after a nationwide ground stop disrupted flights across the United States.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the ground stop on Friday afternoon, citing a telecommunications problem. Officials have not specified the cause of the failure.
“If Congress approves the desperately needed money for Air Traffic Control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that much of the current system was 50 years old.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has asked Congress for $50 billion to fund a new network. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he said he wanted to move operations away from Florida-based L3Harris, which owns and operates the current communications network, but that it was not immediately possible.
Duffy said companies including AT&T, Verizon and Lumen already had infrastructure that could be used for a replacement network.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen pushed back against the administration’s criticism of Congress, saying lawmakers had met its funding requests.
He told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he would support necessary funding but that the administration needed to justify its request.
Republicans had provided $12.5 billion for the system in their “Big Beautiful Bill,” Van Hollen said, adding that only one-third of the money had been spent.
The ground stop was lifted on Friday evening, but disruption continued through the weekend.
More than 9,000 flights were canceled across the country on Friday, followed by around 6,700 on Saturday. By midday Sunday, more than 1,800 US flights had been canceled, according to tracking service FlightAware, compared with a daily average of around 170 a month earlier.
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was the most affected on Sunday, with 10 per cent of departing flights and 14 per cent of arrivals cancelled.
