Trump’s claim Biden-era spending worsened US air traffic control lacks support

Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on 15 November that Joe Biden’s administration had spent money unwisely, leaving an already “old and broken” air traffic control system worse. He said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had a plan and was “ready to go” if Congress supplied more money quickly.

The post came two days after a communications problem halted thousands of flights for hours. Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said the disruption began as contractor L3Harris was replacing a copper line with fibre. Officials were still determining whether an installation error or a faulty router was responsible. FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said the work was routine maintenance, not part of the separate modernisation programme.

Trump linked to a Just the News article published on 14 November. It quoted the Rapid Response 47 account on X saying the Biden administration had done “absolutely nothing” to address air traffic control problems after a nationwide ground stop in 2023. That assertion is false.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’s independent watchdog, says the FAA carried out a risk assessment after the earlier outage. A backup for the pilot-notice system whose failure caused the 2023 stop was also implemented by mid-2024. It helped mitigate later outages in 2025, though flights were still disrupted.

The 2021 infrastructure law signed by Biden set aside $5 billion over five years for air traffic control facilities. A 2023 Congressional Research Service report said the FAA was using the funds to renovate and replace facilities and upgrade power systems.

The system nevertheless remained in poor shape. In a 2023 assessment, the FAA rated 51 of 138 air traffic control systems unsustainable and a further 54 potentially unsustainable. A long-running programme to digitise controllers’ paper flight strips was delayed and faced a 20 per cent cost increase; before the current plan, its proposed rollout was cut from 89 airports to 49. The assessment was a snapshot of maintenance risk, not a comparison with the system when Biden took office or a measure of the effect of particular spending.

The GAO has tracked modernisation problems across administrations for more than four decades. Duffy, too, has said the long-term lack of investment involved both Republicans and Democrats.

Funding the overhaul

Congress appropriated $12.5 billion for the current programme in 2025, including $9 billion for air traffic control systems. The administration asked for a further $30.1 billion in aviation funding on 13 November, before the ground stop. That included $10.1 billion for air traffic control improvements, $2 billion for control towers and $18 billion for airport projects, according to Reuters. Major airlines have backed the request.

After the disruption, Duffy called for $50 billion for air traffic control. It is unclear how that figure relates to the earlier request and the money already approved. The administration wants Congress to act before the end of the year; Democrats are due to take control in January.

The plan is already being implemented. The FAA reported to the GAO that by May 2026 it had replaced 2,560 of 5,170 targeted copper lines. At least 11 related investments were already under way before the plan was announced in May 2025.

But in a September report based largely on May and June data, the GAO said the FAA lacked a reliable lifetime cost estimate for the programme and an integrated schedule for its first phase. The transport department partly agreed with the watchdog’s recommendations and said it maintained estimates and schedules; auditors said the figures omitted major costs and the projects were not adequately linked.

The GAO warned that without better planning the overhaul could repeat the cost overruns and delays that have troubled the FAA for decades, leaving controllers reliant on ageing equipment for longer.