Pete Buttigieg Pushes Back at Suggestion He’s Responsible for FAA’s Ground Stop: ‘Did a Lot to Upgrade the System’

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg addressed criticisms that the Biden administration had not done enough to upgrade the aviation system, preventing the nationwide FAA ground stop that occurred Friday evening. In a press appearance, Buttigieg refuted claims from the Trump administration that his administration was responsible for the crisis.

He emphasized that during his time as transportation secretary, significant efforts were made to upgrade the system. Buttigieg stated, "When we had an outage, I didn’t stand there complaining about the Trump administration. We got to work." He urged for a focus on the underlying causes of the ground stop, rather than blaming political administrations.

Current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed the ground stop on outdated technology, including "old switches, old routers, and 1980s little copper lines." He also noted that the new equipment installed under the Trump administration did not fail. Duffy highlighted that $15 billion had been allocated to the FAA over the past 25 years, yet little progress had been made in modernizing the air traffic control system.

Other critics, such as former Chicago CEO Ari Emanuel, also took to social media to question Buttigieg's performance, expressing frustration over the lack of progress in upgrading the FAA.