US President Donald Trump has blamed the administration of his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the nationwide ground stop that disrupted domestic and international travel and urged Congress to rapidly approve funding for a comprehensive overhaul.
In his first comments on the issue on Sunday, since US authorities grounded all planes for several hours on Friday due to a technical upgrade gone wrong, Trump called the Biden administration's aviation management a "disaster".
"Everything they touched turned bad," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Big money spent unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began."
US President Donald Trump criticised the outdated nation's air traffic control system following widespread flight disruptions caused by a technical failure.
"If Congress approves the desperately needed money for air traffic control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently. It will be the best system anywhere in the world," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, noting that much of the current network is 50 years old.
He argued that work has already begun but must be completed "all at once, not in drips and drabs."
The appeal follows a Friday ground stop issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the agency regulating US civil aviation, which halted nearly all departing flights for hours after communications and radar systems experienced intermittent failures.
Officials traced the breakdown to routine maintenance by contractor L3Harris at a remote facility, where a newly installed router overloaded parts of the network during work to replace ageing copper telecommunications lines with fibre-optic connections.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that the failed legacy equipment will continue breaking down without a "complete overhaul of the system", which he estimated will cost roughly $50 billion.
While FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford noted the agency has received $12.5 billion for modernisation, Duffy indicated that he will submit a broader funding request to Congress on Monday.
