President Donald Trump finally broke his silence on the nationwide FAA ground stop on Sunday morning, November 15 — and he used his first words on the crisis to blame the Biden administration and demand that Congress pay for a brand-new air traffic control system. In a series of Truth Social posts, the 80-year-old president called the previous administration “an FAA disaster” and said much of America’s air traffic control system, now 50 years old, was “RIDICULOUS!”

The posts ended nearly two days of public silence about the grounding, America’s biggest aviation crisis in a quarter of a century. The FAA ordered every departing flight in the country to stop at 3:45 p.m. ET on Friday, November 13, and kept the skies shut for nearly five hours — only the second time in history the entire national airspace has been grounded, after September 11, 2001.

The silence had become a story of its own. On Saturday, CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins called it out on Instagram: Trump had posted about California Governor Gavin Newsom, the riverboat crash in New Orleans and the entertainment industry — but “not a single word” about the ground stop that stranded hundreds of thousands of travellers. The White House’s Rapid Response 47 account, meanwhile, had already started blaming the Biden administration on X.

“The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster. Everything they touched turned bad. Big money spent unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began. We have the knowledge and plan for the Flight Control Systems, we need Congress to give the money, FAST! Our FAA is doing a great job, and is ready to go.”

In a second post, Trump turned to the money. “If Congress approves the desperately needed money for Air Traffic Control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently. It will be the BEST SYSTEM anywhere in the World,” he wrote. “Much of our current air control system is 50 years old — RIDICULOUS! We have already started the work, but it should be done all at once, not in drips and drabs. Congress must approve. The Biden Administration set it back years!”

That money fight is now the centre of the story: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants $50 billion more from Congress to rebuild the system, on top of the $12.5 billion approved in 2025. The FAA has described that $12.5 billion as only a “down payment”, and said in December 2025 that $20 billion more would be needed for its Brand New Air Traffic Control System. Duffy’s problem, he explained on Sunday, is that the approved money is earmarked for physical hardware — there is “no money in that $12.5 billion” for a new telecoms architecture, the part of the system that actually failed on Friday.

Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee pushed back on Saturday, saying much of that $12.5 billion remains unspent more than a year after approval. That fight will now play out in Congress, with the president demanding the money “FAST” and his critics asking why the money already given has not been spent.

What actually broke on Friday is becoming clearer — and so far it does not point at any administration. The FAA’s communications network failed after a router at a facility in El Dorado, Arkansas, was replaced as part of a long-running project to swap old copper lines for fibre-optic cable. A second system in Amarillo, Texas, replaced about three weeks earlier, then started causing problems too, Duffy said on ABC on Sunday. The contractor behind the work is L3Harris, and investigators believe the cause was either a faulty router or an installation error — not a foreign cyberattack.

Both routers are now at an L3Harris laboratory in Florida, where company engineers are testing them alongside FAA staff and engineers from equipment makers Juniper and Cisco. “We have the router,” Duffy said on Fox News on Sunday. “It’s at the L3Harris lab in Florida with FAA staff. We are doing a full review of the router and the process that was used in El Dorado.”

The scale is hard to overstate: on Friday, about 9,200 flights were cancelled and 7,500 delayed; on Saturday, more than 6,400 cancelled and 8,000 delayed; on Sunday, another 1,600-plus cancelled and around 4,200 delayed, according to FlightAware — more than 15,000 cancellations in two days. Duffy told CBS’s Face the Nation that flights should be “running at full capacity” by Monday, “back to normal” on Sunday and “fully normal” on Monday.

MythPost has followed this story from the start — the four-hour grounding, then the single router that caused it, and on Saturday night the collision between a Copa 737 and a UPS 767 at Miami airport, a day after every flight in America was grounded. The FAA has not linked that collision to the ground stop, and its investigation is still open.

THE STORY SO FAR

Friday, November 13, about 3:36 p.m. ET — The FAA starts seeing instability in radar and communications systems at air traffic control centres.

Friday, November 13, 3:45 p.m. ET — The FAA orders a nationwide ground stop, halting every departing flight in America.

Friday, November 13, 8:15 p.m. ET — The airspace reopens after nearly five hours. Duffy calls for $50 billion to replace the FAA’s ageing telecoms system.

Saturday, November 14 — More than 6,400 flights are cancelled. Duffy says a contractor’s copper-to-fibre work is the preliminary cause. House Democrats say much of the $12.5 billion is still unspent. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins calls out Trump’s silence. At about 9:15 p.m. ET, a Copa 737 and a UPS 767 collide at Miami airport.

Sunday, November 15, morning — Trump breaks his silence on Truth Social, blaming the Biden administration and demanding Congress fund a new system. Duffy appears on ABC, Fox News and CBS, saying flights will be back to full capacity on Monday.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

The question now goes to Congress, where Duffy’s $50 billion request and Trump’s demand for the money “FAST” will meet the Democrats’ argument that the $12.5 billion already approved has not been spent — and no new funding moves until that argument is settled.

In Florida, the L3Harris lab tests will decide what actually failed — a bad router, or a bad installation. That answer matters: it decides whether the fix is new equipment, new procedures, or both.

For travellers, the immediate picture is better: Duffy expects flights at full capacity on Monday, November 16. And at Miami airport, the FAA investigation into Saturday night’s collision continues, with no link to Friday’s grounding established.