The federal government shut down every departing flight in America on Friday because a contractor swapped out some copper wire. Now the same officials who oversaw this mess want billions more from taxpayers to fix it.
An FAA system malfunction triggered a nationwide ground stop Friday afternoon, forcing more than 3,500 aircraft to land and stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers. Flights were grounded for nearly five hours. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CBS's "Face the Nation" that disruptions should ease by "end of today, end of tomorrow" — meaning Sunday or Monday at the latest — as airlines scramble to reposition crews and aircraft.
The cause? Contractor L3Harris Technologies was replacing a section of old copper wire with new fiber wire at an FAA facility in El Dorado, Arkansas. When the router was turned on, a problem cropped up at a facility in Amarillo, Texas, cascading into a nationwide shutdown. "We didn't think that should or would happen," Duffy told ABC's "This Week."
One router swap. Two facilities. Total system collapse. That's the state of America's air traffic control infrastructure — a system Duffy and President Trump both describe as 50 years old.
Where Was Trump?
President Trump was nowhere to be seen during the crisis. While passengers sat stranded in terminals, Trump posted on Truth Social about making the entertainment industry great again. He didn't address the ground stop until Sunday — two days later — when he used the incident to demand Congress approve more money for air traffic control upgrades.
The New York Times made Trump's silence its framing device, noting he posted about movie production tax incentives "in the middle of the crisis." The paper reported that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stepped in to defend the president's absence Friday night: "This is what President Trump does. He puts leaders in place, and he allows them to lead."
Follow the Money
Here's what neither Trump nor Duffy emphasized: Congress already approved $12.5 billion for the FAA as part of the Republican tax cut package last year. Duffy has called that a mere "down payment." And before that, Joe Biden signed an infrastructure bill that set aside $25 billion for the FAA to improve airports, traffic control towers, and "upgrade the foundation" of the air traffic control system, according to the FAA.
That's at least $37.5 billion appropriated in recent years, and a contractor swapping wire still managed to crash the entire system. The AP-sourced outlets — WIS10, the Chicago Tribune, and WTOP — all reported the Biden infrastructure figure but buried it beneath Trump's complaints about his predecessor.
L3Harris Technologies, the contractor whose work triggered the cascade, is now conducting "deep diagnostics" on the seized routers from the Texas and Arkansas facilities, according to Duffy's post on X. The same company that helped break it is now investigating why it broke.
The Bipartisan Track Record
Trump blamed Biden for making "an old and broken system worse than when they began." Biden's people could point to that $25 billion infrastructure spend. Republicans could point to their $12.5 billion. Both parties have had their crack at fixing this. Neither did. The system remains so fragile that a single equipment swap in Arkansas can ground every flight in America.
Duffy is pressing Congress for billions more. Whether that money produces a system that works — or just another contractor paycheck — is the question neither party seems interested in answering.
