'Duffy Lied': Air Traffic Controllers Refute Trump Transportation Secretary's Ground Stop Explanation

Air traffic controllers are rejecting US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's explanation for Friday's nationwide flight ground stop, raising questions about the Trump administration's account of a communications failure that disrupted air travel across the United States, affecting an estimated 1.5 million travelers.

Washington Examiner homeland security reporter Anna Giaritelli told CNN's Laura Coates during a Friday night interview that she'd spoken with 60 air traffic controllers about the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground stop, which was just the third to ever occur.

"None of them are buying what he said," Giaritelli said. "The controllers were saying, 'We don’t buy that this is actually what’s happening, the reason that Sean Duffy is saying this has happened.'"

At a White House briefing Friday evening, Duffy blamed the disruption on America's aging air traffic control infrastructure, saying overloaded switches and routers had produced inconsistent radar and communications data.

“Our switches, our routers actually got overloaded with data,” he said. “And because of that, we shut the system down.”

But Giaritelli said the controllers she contacted questioned the plausibility of the administration's account, particularly the timing of the alleged equipment changes.

“These types of switches... that the FAA is doing, they don't happen during the day,” she told Coates. “They don't happen during busy times like a Friday afternoon. They're doing these midweek, middle of the night, when there is no air traffic going on.

Giaritelli's comments came as the Trump administration struggled to explain how a failure in the nation's air traffic control network could have escalated into a shutdown affecting airports nationwide. The FAA lifted the ground stop at approximately 8:15 pm Eastern on Friday, but the disruption continued Saturday.

Duffy offered a new detail on Saturday, saying that a system overload occurred when contractor L3Harris Technologies Inc. was replacing a section of the air traffic control system’s old copper wire with new fiber wire.

“Our contractor didn’t meet the moment or the equipment didn’t meet the moment,” the secretary said, adding that officials were investigating whether the contractor's "incompetence" or a faulty router was to blame.

Duffy emphatically denied that the FAA's recent nationwide rollout of an $875 million artificial intelligence system called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories (SMART) had anything to do with Friday's disruption, claiming that the system "is not even plugged in."

The FAA said earlier this week that it "will now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 [air traffic control] centers across the country to reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption, and improve the travel experience for the flying public."

Duffy also used the crisis to renew his demand for $50 billion in congressional funding to overhaul the nation's air traffic control system, arguing that the aging infrastructure would continue to fail without additional investment.

The administration's shifting account has added to calls for an independent investigation. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday that investigators had found no evidence of a cyberattack, although he acknowledged that the possibility had not been entirely ruled out.

Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) was among those who challenged the administration's explanation, suggesting that Duffy had concealed the role of the Trump administration's own modernization efforts.

Walkinshaw cited a September report from the Government Accountability Office warning that precisely this could happen.

“In essence, the FAA is buying delivery speed at the risk of cost uncertainty and potential disruptions," GAO said. "The net effect could be that air traffic controllers are forced to continue to rely on severely outdated systems that are prone to failure leading to more system outages, ground stops, flight delays, or worse—safety incidents.”

The fiasco prompted critics, including Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, to call for Duffy's resignation.

"From chronic air traffic controller shortages to repeated communications breakdowns, serious lapses in our aviation system have become a pattern on Sean Duffy’s watch," Hochul wrote on Facebook.

"Through it all, he’s been more focused on starring in his own reality show than addressing the crisis at his agency," she added, referring to the former MTV "Real World: Boston" and "Road Rules: All Stars" participant's "The Great American Road Trip" travel series, which features his family, including his wife, Fox News personality Rachel Campos Duffy.

The ground stop was the longest nationwide aviation shutdown in 25 years, with more than 3,500 aircraft already airborne when the FAA ordered the grounding. More than 4,100 flights were canceled Saturday alone, according to FlightAware.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Saturday that normal operations were expected to resume by Sunday evening.