Donald Trump’s transportation chief has admitted that the botched timing of “routine” maintenance work led to a nationwide halt on air travel Friday.
Speaking at a Saturday morning press conference as thousands of American travelers were still stranded in airports due to the sudden crisis, Sean Duffy said an “upgrade” to telecom systems was to blame. A contractor had been upgrading copper wire to fiber optic cable on Friday afternoon when the system began to get overloaded, Duffy said.
A reporter asked Duffy a simple question—why the upgrade hadn’t been planned for midnight Saturday, when skies are relatively empty of planes, and was instead conducted at 3 p.m. Friday during peak travel time.
A person takes a photo of a screen displaying information of delayed and cancelled flights after the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a national ground stop “due to extraordinary circumstances and reasons for safety” following the agency’s earlier report of serious air traffic control communications issues, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, US, November 13, 2026.
Duffy said the switchover was conducted at a “remote location,” where repairs happen during the day, not at a bigger location where they’re conducted at night.
“But these smaller locations don’t have that kind of impact, or they shouldn’t have that kind of impact, which is what we saw yesterday. So there will be a reevaluation of when we do this work,” he said.
Bizarrely, Duffy went on to suggest the contractor may be to blame, telling reporters: “Many of our contractors, many of our partners, they take our money and they provide really poor service to us.”
He repeatedly lamented the impact of the ground stop on college football, saying, “We do want to move teams around the country so we can have playoffs happen,” before adding that, of course, the “general public” is the priority.
Millions of passengers were impacted by the delays and cancellations, with long queues at airports as passengers waited for news of when they could travel.
Duffy has sought to deflect criticism for the grounding and demanded $50 billion from Congress for work to upgrade U.S. air traffic control systems.
Critics have asked why Trump and his top officials had waited for hours to update the public as millions of travelers were left stranded, and why Republicans had not acted to make the repairs during their two years in control of Congress ahead of the midterms.
Duffy, a former reality TV star who appeared on MTV’s “The Real World,” also drew mockery on Friday for appearing at the briefing in an unzipped vest and no undershirt, after previously launching a campaign urging air travelers to dress better and avoid casual attire.
On Saturday, he delivered the briefing in a blue suit and tie. He said that investigators are looking into whether faulty equipment or mistakes by contractors had played a role in the telecom’s failure.
“It’s pretty straightforward work that we were doing yesterday at, again, a very remote location,” Duffy said.
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