'incompetence' Or Faulty Equipment? Duffy Blames Air Contractor And Demands $50b From Congress.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sought to reassure harried air travelers coping with the fallout from Friday's hourslong nationwide air traffic ground stop, while pointing fingers at a government contractor and possible "incompetence" for the calamity.

At a press conference plagued by audio problems, he also underscored his call for $50 billion from Congress to upgrade the rickety system.

“We’re gonna have a great end-of-the-year Christmas present for the American people,” he said. “We’re gonna get a chunk of money.”

However, Congress has been lukewarm to Duffy’s previous ask of $30 billion, which he has been pushing for several months.

The shutdown of the nation’s airspace is continuing to ripple across the country, with canceled flights and continuing delays. Democrats have seized on the meltdown; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it part of a series of "unacceptable air travel incidents." Some top Republicans have said the incident proves that more upgrades to the system are needed.

And questions remain over what, exactly, happened Friday.

'One of the worst-kept secrets'

At the press conference Saturday, Duffy pointed fingers at a government contractor for the nationwide ground stop that affected millions of travelers.

Duffy said it was unclear whether it was an error from L3 Harris, a longtime contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration, or if it was a faulty system. The company has been working to switch communications systems to fiber — work that has been ongoing for months — from the aging copper wire that serves dozens of facilities.

“What we’re working to determine is did we have incompetence — meaning was it user error — from L3 Harris? Or, did they install a faulty router?” Duffy said.

He added, “Were they not doing great work for us at L3 Harris?” before concluding, “This was an FAA system that didn't meet the moment.”

L3 Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Friday, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin alluded to an equipment overload, saying that “new equipment, new technology … was overwhelming the older system.”

At the press conference, FAA chief Bryan Bedford said the technology, known as FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure, or FTI, was the key to the problem, and is “one of the worst-kept secrets in government that this FTI system needs to be replaced.”

Duffy explained that during the Friday system update, there were more than 1,000 connection attempts every few seconds, which essentially flooded other routers across the air traffic control system. An internal FAA memo, reviewed by POLITICO, said that preliminary assessments identified a “data saturation” issue within the communications network. Two malfunctioning servers caused communication equipment to “become overloaded and distribute inaccurate data,” the memo said.

“The system started to exhibit some instability, and over a course of about 45 minutes, we could not assess the cause of the instability,” Bedford said. “At which point, about 3:45 [p.m.] yesterday, we implemented the ground stop. We did that because we felt it was helpful to remove pressure from the system,” he said.

AI not to blame

Both Duffy and Bedford underscored that the work was routine to sustain the current system, not targeting a specific problem or vulnerability. He also said a contractor overseeing the modernization effort, Virginia-based Peraton, was not to blame.

“This is ordinary, course-of-business stuff. This is not part of the Peraton, FAA $12.5 billion modernization effort,” Bedford said. Peraton, which won a $1.5 billion contract last year, has gotten off to a rough start in overseeing the mammoth modernization project.

The error was also not caused by the FAA’s new artificial intelligence-driven traffic management tool, Duffy said, which the FAA debuted this week nationwide for its 22 Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Those centers manage aircraft traveling between airports at high and mid-altitude and primarily guide pilots along their routes to maintain safe separation between planes. The FAA on Friday said the communication issue was impacting many of those same type of centers.

Duffy said as the FAA begins working to replace the system with new architecture, “until I can build that, I'm stuck with L3 Harris, who owns this network.” L3, which was known as Harris Corp., won a contract for that work in 2002.

The FTI system became the subject of public scrutiny last year after SpaceX chief Elon Musk made several postings on X trashing the existing system and boosting his own satellite-based Starlink — though he did not explicitly call for swapping one with the other.

The ground stop rippled across the country, disrupting flights at airports nationwide and leaving airlines facing a backlog of delays throughout the weekend as they worked to get operations back on schedule.

Hill jousting

Friday’s nearly five-hour ground stop is part of a series of calamities to befall the nation’s aging air traffic system, including recent incidents in Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia and Raleigh, North Carolina.

For months now, Duffy has been trying to drum up support for $30 billion to upgrade the system, though Congress has yet to act. Republicans provided $12.5 billion to begin upgrades of the system in last year’s megalaw.

POLITICO first reported that Duffy had planned to be on Capitol Hill next week to lobby lawmakers on the funding. On Friday following the ground stop, he upped the ask to $50 billion.

While some Republicans in Congress have sided with Duffy in saying the system needs more funding and improvements, Democrats have seized on the debacle. Jeffries, in his statement Friday said: "From day one, instead of taking responsibility, MAGA extremists have fired and scapegoated hardworking federal employees whose job it is to keep our skies safe, particularly women and people of color."

However, Republicans on the Commerce Committee, which is led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on Friday that the incident "highlights the need to prioritize modernizing" Air Route Traffic Control Centers — the same type of facilities that were affected by the outages Friday.

Rep. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who is leading a bill that would provide $30 billion for air traffic control upgrades, said on X that the grounding of flights "should be a wake-up call."

"The greatest country in the history of the world should have world-class technology and airport infrastructure," he added.

But even before Friday's chaos, top Democrats in Congress were throwing cold water on the ask (let alone the new, $50 billion request Duffy made). Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington, who is in line to chair the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee next year, told POLITICO earlier this week, "I haven’t seen a path yet for another $30 billion.”

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul called on Duffy to step down as secretary. “Sean Duffy must resign, or President Trump must remove him immediately,” she said Saturday on X.

Sam Ogozalek and Samuel Larreal contributed to this report.