Trump Blames Aging Equipment for FAA Ground Stop as One Tally Counts 5,117 Cancellations

Since the FAA ended its nationwide ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET Friday, Nov. 13, the story has shifted from what broke to who explains it, who pays for it, and how long the mess lasts.

The president's first account came secondhand. Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy told Laura Ingraham he had spoken with Trump by phone. Doocy said Trump told him it does not look like a cyberattack or AI-related, and that nobody has claimed credit, which Trump called common after a large attack on critical infrastructure.

Trump's alternative, as Doocy relayed it, was "a bunch of old broken stuff in the infrastructure that the FAA relies on to keep planes in the sky." Doocy said Trump described some of the equipment as 55 years old and said the administration has talked to Congress about replacing it. "It just hasn't gotten replaced yet," Doocy quoted him as saying.

Trump said he or his team would tell the public if that assessment changes.

What the officials have said

Duffy put the start of the failure at 3:36 p.m. ET, when the FAA saw instability in radar and communications systems at air traffic control centers and TRACON facilities nationwide. Controllers were getting inconsistent information from radar and from the networks linking them to aircraft.

More than 3,500 aircraft were airborne when the ground stop was ordered, Duffy said.

He blamed an overloaded legacy analog telecommunications network. He described it as "old switches, old routers" and "1980s little copper lines." Newer IP-based systems kept working, he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said earlier Friday that there was no indication of an attack, only a telecommunications outage, though officials were not ruling anything out. Later, he called the aging infrastructure a "national security risk."

Neither Duffy nor Mullin has said what pushed the analog network past its limit. Trump's 55-year-old figure also does not match Duffy's 1980s description.

The damage count

By one tally, the day produced 9,814 delays and 5,117 cancellations and left an estimated 1.5 million travelers stranded. Duffy warned that lifting the order would not put planes back on schedule. "It's going to be slow," he said, and the recovery depends on whether pilots and flight attendants are in position.

He said airlines would move what they could Friday night and start again Saturday morning.

Pro sports felt it too. The Brooklyn Nets were trying to fly from New Orleans to Memphis when their flight was halted. The San Jose Sharks missed their flight to Utah for Saturday night's game against the Mammoth, then got clearance to Salt Lake City after the order lifted. NFL teams are due to travel for Sunday's games.

The money fight

The ask is not new in kind. On Thursday, Duffy and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought sent Congress a letter seeking $30 billion to modernize air traffic control, citing a "resilient telecommunications backbone," new hardware and software, towers and airport infrastructure. The letter went out a day before the outage.

After the ground stop, Duffy raised the figure to up to $50 billion. He said piecemeal upgrades are no longer enough to replace the aging telecommunications network.

Not everyone on the right is buying it. Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X: "Thank God, no one got hurt today, but I am shocked they turned this press conference into a shakedown of more money from the already broke American people!"

Mullin, for his part, argued that years of congressional inaction left the system exposed, and said the response showed "the leadership of President Trump."

The silence complaint

Critics went after the administration's visibility during the crisis. Seth Abramson, a Trump biographer, wrote on X that there was nothing from the president, the White House communications office or a Transportation Department press conference for hours, and called it "what incompetent government looks like." Ingraham told Doocy on air, "We need a reassuring briefing."

The Daily Beast reported that Trump spent Friday evening posting on Truth Social about tax breaks for film and television. Duffy and Mullin did hold a briefing shortly before 9 p.m., after flights began moving again.

Microsoft also apologized Friday for a separate global outage that began Thursday, and said it was not caused by malicious cyber or AI activity. No official has linked it to the FAA failure.

What comes next

The ground stop was the second nationwide stop in U.S. airspace since the 9/11 attacks, after a brief one in January 2023. Congress has not yet acted on the funding request, and Duffy has not said what portion of the $50 billion would go first to the analog network that failed. Passengers should expect the backlog to run into the weekend.