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President Donald Trump on Sunday urged Congress to quickly approve funding for a sweeping overhaul of the US air traffic control system. His appeal came two days after a technical failure forced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to halt nearly all departing flights across the country.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that if lawmakers approve the “desperately needed money,” the system can be built “quickly and efficiently” and will become “the best system anywhere in the world.” He noted that much of the current network is 50 years old.
Trump said work has already begun but must be completed “all at once, not in drips and drabs.” He blamed the administration of former President Joe Biden for mismanaging funds and setting modernization efforts back by years.
The FAA issued the ground stop on Friday after communications and radar systems suffered intermittent failures. It halted nearly all departing flights for hours before the restriction was lifted that evening. Airlines continued to cancel and delay flights over the weekend. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said he expects schedules to return to normal by the end of Sunday, though he cautioned that disruptions could persist.
Officials traced the breakdown to routine maintenance by contractor L3Harris at a remote facility. Crews were replacing aging copper telecommunications lines with fiber-optic connections when a newly installed router overloaded parts of the network. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the overload then spread to routers at other FAA air traffic control sites nationwide.
Investigators have not determined the underlying fault. They are examining whether it was user error, an installation mistake or a faulty router. L3Harris said it is supporting the FAA’s investigation and has completed more than 70% of the planned copper-to-fiber conversion.
L3Harris, based in Melbourne, Florida, operates the FAA’s telecommunications network and has worked with the agency on its communications systems since 2002.
Duffy warned that the failing legacy equipment will keep breaking down without a “complete overhaul of the system,” which he estimated would cost roughly $50 billion. He said the new architecture would involve AT&T, Verizon and Lumen, and that the agency relies on L3Harris’ legacy network until then.
Bedford noted that the FAA has received $12.5 billion for modernization. Congress approved that sum in 2025, including $9 billion for systems and $3.5 billion for facilities. Duffy said he will submit a broader funding request to Congress on Monday.
The modernization effort has faced rising costs. Bedford told a House appropriations subcommittee in September that the first phase of the program is costing $16 billion. That is well above the $10.6 billion the agency had earlier projected. The FAA has asked Congress for an additional $10 billion for a second phase.
A Government Accountability Office report released that week found the first phase includes more than 11,000 projects. It also found that the FAA had underestimated both the cost of operating the new system and the time needed to complete the work.
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