Trump Speaks Out for First Time Two Days After U.S. Aviation Crisis: "Biden Administration to Blame"

FAA Communications System Failure Disrupts Flights Nationwide

U.S. President Donald Trump spoke out for the first time two days after an unprecedented aviation crisis halted takeoffs across the United States. Blaming the previous administration of Joe Biden for neglecting the aging air traffic control system, Trump urged Congress to approve funding for a large-scale system replacement.

U.S. President Donald Trump

On November 15 (local time), Trump criticized the Biden administration in a post on Truth Social, saying, "The Biden Administration was a disaster for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Everything they touched went wrong." He added, "They recklessly wasted vast sums of money and made the old, broken system worse than it was at the start of their administration."

The aviation crisis began on November 13, when the FAA's air traffic control communications system experienced a failure. At 3:53 p.m. Eastern Time that day, the FAA issued a "ground stop" order prohibiting aircraft from taking off across the United States. The measure lasted about four hours and 30 minutes, disrupting flights nationwide. Cancellations and delays continued through November 15, two days after the incident.

The failure was attributed to an equipment malfunction during the replacement of aging communications lines. At a press conference on November 14, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the failure occurred as L3Harris, an FAA contractor, was replacing existing copper lines with fiber-optic cables. It has not yet been determined whether the problem was caused by worker error or a defect in the equipment itself.

At a press conference on November 13, the day of the incident, Secretary Duffy asked Congress to provide $50 billion (about 67 trillion won) to fully modernize the air traffic control system.

In a post that day, President Trump also stressed, "We have the knowledge and a plan to improve the air traffic control system, and we need Congress to provide funding quickly."

In another post, he said, "If Congress approves the urgently needed funding for air traffic control, we can build the system quickly and efficiently," adding that "it will be the best system in the world, found nowhere else."

He continued, "Most of the current air traffic control system is 50 years old. This is absurd," stressing, "We have already started improvements, but instead of doing them bit by bit, we need to replace the entire system all at once." He reiterated, "Congress must approve the funding. The Biden administration delayed this work for years."

Trump used the incident to emphasize the need to replace the aging air traffic control system in its entirety, while placing blame for the failure on the previous administration. However, questions are also being raised about the current administration's responsibility for failing to ensure the system's safety during the roughly two years since the start of Trump's second term.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.