Buttigieg takes swipe at Trump administration amid FAA flight chaos

DENVER — Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took a swipe at the Trump administration’s handling of Friday’s nationwide FAA ground stop, joking that he would help stranded travelers rebook flights as delays and cancellations continued.

I’ll begin with a public service announcement," Buttigieg told reporters in Denver. "I will be available in the hotel bar following the concert for anybody who needs to rebook their flights or get a refund per your rights."

He made the remark as the "What’s Next" conference wrapped up in Denver. The two-day gathering, hosted by Majority Democrats, brought leaders together to discuss the party’s direction after its midterm victories.

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The FAA lifted the ground stop shortly after 8 p.m. Friday, more than four hours after it began, but flights remained delayed and canceled over the weekend. The agency cited safety concerns and serious air traffic control communications issues.

Buttigieg, who said he had no inside information about the cause of the ground stop, later questioned why the aviation system’s safeguards had not prevented an outage of that scale. He said he was watching the disruption as a traveler with a flight scheduled for Saturday.

"The system has many redundancies in it, so that normally, if there’s one point of failure, something else can catch it," he said. "It is not clear to me why that redundancy did not prevent an outage of this magnitude."

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Meanwhile, Trump administration officials offered a mixed account of the failure. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the cause remained under investigation, including whether a contractor made an error or equipment failed.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin later said the stoppage was not caused by artificial intelligence or a cyberattack, but by aging infrastructure that needs to be updated. President Donald Trump told Fox News that the system had broken down because of its age.

Friday’s disruption was the second nationwide ground stop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The first came in January 2023, when the FAA paused domestic departures for about 90 minutes because of an outage in its Notice to Air Missions system, which provides pilots with safety information.

The FAA said at the time it found no evidence of a cyberattack. Buttigieg ordered a review of that outage and directed the agency to report on what happened and recommend steps to prevent a recurrence.