FAA lifts flight ban; WH says Trump needs billions more to fix system

[0:00] the white house press briefing not usually held on a friday night but what was warranted [0:05] by this of course is that nationwide ground stop that has been in place for hours [0:09] this afternoon canceling thousands of flights leaving thousands of passengers across the nation [0:15] stranded and those were the two federal officials taking questions on this [0:18] transportation secretary sean duffy and the department of homeland security secretary [0:23] mark wayne mullen duffy argued that this is a quote legacy system problem legacy system problem [0:29] that took place which is what caused many people who are still stuck on planes right now watching [0:33] that briefing to get stuck on those planes they say there was zero evidence so far that they are [0:38] still investigating that a cyber attack caused this and said that no nefarious actors have taken credit [0:44] for that they said that there is also no evidence it is tied to that microsoft outage that was in [0:48] place for hours yesterday as well instead you heard those two federal officials calling for more funding [0:55] from congress to fix the nation's air traffic control system cns pete muntean is with me now and pete [1:01] obviously we saw right before these officials came out they lifted uh the ground stop what's behind the [1:07] faa's decision there and what stood out to you from what you heard from secretary duffy and secretary [1:11] mark wayne mullen a lot of new information uh there from the secretaries 3500 planes in the air [1:19] won this ground stop one into place at 354 pm eastern time ended at 8 19 pm eastern time total time [1:29] four hours and 25 minutes though we are not out of the woods yet the latest data from flight aware [1:35] is that there have been 9 000 flight delays in the u.s 6 000 flight cancellations about 11 000 flights [1:43] were left to be operated by airlines at the time that this ground stop went into place meaning that [1:49] one and a half million air passengers were stranded by this unprecedented move because of a problem [1:57] with a system called time delay multiplexing or tdm it is an old school copper wire telecommunication [2:07] system that is the backbone of the national airspace system it's responsible for essentially squeezing [2:15] signals into one line uh carries signals such as uh ground to ground communication so air traffic [2:22] control facility landline to air traffic control facility landline ground to air communication [2:28] meaning uh carrying the signals from an air traffic control facility to a broadcast tower which then [2:34] transmits the radio voice to pilots and then it's also responsible uh for signals such as the radar [2:42] communication uh that uh air traffic controllers see on their scopes in front of them so without this [2:48] system they were essentially operating blind and deaf duffy says that this system started to experience [2:57] what he calls instability at about 3 36 pm eastern time and that's what led the faa to put into place [3:06] this nationwide ground stop he said we could not risk it essentially to keep planes flying [3:12] one this system was unstable uh mark wayne mullen the dhs secretary said this is not a cyber attack [3:19] seems to be a hardware related issue there's some still big questions about why this precipitated with [3:26] this system we know that it has been a problem before there was the newark outages that caused roving [3:35] rolling blackouts of radar and radio uh back in 2025 uh that caused some controllers to take what's called [3:43] trauma leave and left that facility woefully short staffed for a long period of time uh we will see [3:49] though uh if duffy and mullen get their way here they essentially use this incident to grandstand and put [3:57] congress on blast for even more money for a trump administration priority what's called bnat a brand [4:04] new air traffic control system before today i just talked to secretary duffy on monday the ask was for [4:11] 30 billion dollars in more funding for air traffic control system and uh overhauls of infrastructure [4:19] now the ask is 50 billion in emergency funding uh that is the new number uh just out from transportation [4:27] secretary sean duffy we will see if this congress does ultimately give that uh to the trumpet [4:34] administration uh he says that congress has given the trump administration 12 and a half billion dollars [4:40] but duffy calls that simply a down payment to get to where they need to go the faa has been [4:46] uh scrambling to replace copper wire that is central to this system with uh ip systems uh using a fiber cable [4:55] something that you're familiar with uh using modern day like cable internet uh previous is more akin to dial [5:01] up or maybe t1 lines so they're trying to bring things into the new century here although it is [5:06] a really hard thing to do for the federal aviation administration it's a poor metaphor but it's an apt [5:12] one it's like trying to fix the plane while flying it at the same time and it's why congress has said [5:17] the fa really needs to pump the brakes on new things like its ai system that just did a nationwide [5:22] rollout this week uh for more efficient flight routes uh that does not seem to be at play here that [5:28] does not seem to be to blame uh that's more of a back-end thing although uh those in the know have [5:34] pointed out that when you introduce a new thing into the faa patchwork of systems that is often very [5:40] old that can introduce failure so there's some big questions to ask here as we dig into exactly what [5:47] went wrong here yeah i mean and it's led to this total dumpster fire that is now playing out across the [5:53] nation's airport meltdown um pete to to put in a technical term i mean the secretary of transportation [5:59] was calling this a national emergency and talking about that funding you know some reporters pointed [6:04] out inside the room republicans have controlled congress for the last two years with a republican [6:08] president as he's been seeking that money and he's obviously made clear before that he they he feels [6:13] that they need more money but i just think in terms of you know where this is going in the next couple [6:18] of hours pete with this lifted sean duffy himself did not seem to know how quickly all of this could [6:24] be resolved i mean one timeline he had offered was that they would be fully back by thanksgiving [6:29] in two weeks from now yeah i heard that too and i thought that was a particularly pessimistic [6:36] outlook on how this will go down i think uh airlines will be somewhat back to normal tomorrow [6:41] although we are seeing the cancellations begin to pile up already for tomorrow and the delays for [6:47] tomorrow airlines essentially need to unplug their systems and plug it back in again because [6:51] so many pilots have timed out now they have our restrictions imposed by the department of [6:56] transportation crews are in the wrong spots airplanes are in the wrong spots uh in some cases [7:02] there are no gates left at airports reagan national airport just outside of washington dc put out an alert [7:07] through the faa saying we can't accept any more diversions no flights that weren't planned to be [7:12] here should be here so this will take some time for things to get essentially right sized and back to [7:19] normal uh the best thing you can do right now is to communicate with your airline i would say try to [7:23] book on the first flight tomorrow if you have a plan to get out tonight uh you can probably kiss that [7:28] goodbye we know that jet blue said they were going to operate no more flights tonight as a critical [7:33] operator i'll be at a smaller airline in the northeast corridor uh we will see how things go for the larger [7:38] airlines the ones that are so predicated on the hub and spoke system uh some of those major hubs like [7:44] newark for united uh that is right sort of at the smack dab center of this chicago was heavily impacted [7:51] atlanta a huge hub for delta uh charlotte a huge hub for american airlines and dfw also a huge hub for [7:57] american airlines uh so we'll see sort of as this unfolds we are not out of the woods yet it will take [8:04] some time for airlines to get back to normal get people in place places sorry people and planes [8:10] in the right places uh as they uh continue to sort of grapple with the scope of this they've been [8:16] fought caught flat-footed for hours now person obviously these officials it seemed like they've [8:20] been waiting for the faa to lift this ground stop because the briefing was expected to start around [8:24] eight they came out around 8 30. um what stood out to you from what you heard and your questions to the [8:30] secretaries well there's still a number of questions that we didn't get answers to [8:34] one just talking about and asking the question of should americans feel safe to fly we heard a [8:39] number of different answers one we heard secretary duffy saying this is the safest system on earth and [8:44] two he told me at a different point that there's going to be more of these outages more of these [8:48] system failures unless congress acts unless congress gives more money and as pete mentioned i mean they [8:53] really did use this as an opportunity to try and hammer congress for more money to try and push this [8:59] legislative uh this legislature that they have been trying to get through now of course they've upped the [9:04] anti once again uh secretary duffy and the question that i had you know after he had spoke for an [9:11] enormous amount of time on how old they knew the system was i asked why they weren't prepared for some [9:17] sort of failure yes they didn't have the money to put in new systems but if they knew that the system was [9:22] so fragile why weren't they prepared he essentially said that he couldn't anticipate every kind of [9:28] catastrophic failure that was going to happen but again i mean that is the government's job is to try [9:34] and look ahead to potential failures and have backup plans in place now the other question was after [9:41] both of these officials spent a lot of time complimenting president trump saying he's a builder [9:47] saying he was the best president of our time and this was so important to him i asked why we hadn't [9:52] heard from president trump they said well they had heard from president trump but the american people [9:56] have still not heard from from president trump he has not gone out there he posted on true social [10:01] about a bipartisan piece of legislature about the motion picture association he talked about the [10:07] rescue today uh in new orleans when that ship was hit or that cruise was hit but he has not [10:12] commented on this at all now these officials assured me and the reporters in the room and [10:19] the american public i assume who was watching uh that president trump cares about this and that he [10:24] is engaging in it but we still haven't heard from the president when it comes to this five hour nearly [10:31] five hour nationwide outage which the last time we saw something that even came close to this magnitude [10:37] of course we know there was one in 2023 but before that was 9 11 uh which had a lot of americans [10:45] deeply concerned today that this was some kind of cyber attack or attack or terrorist attack uh and we [10:52] still yet have not heard from the president