The Independent reported that President Donald Trump told Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy that aging Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) equipment may have contributed to Friday’s nationwide flight disruption.
During a Fox News broadcast, Doocy said Trump told him the incident did not appear to involve a cyberattack or artificial intelligence. Trump described parts of the system as “old broken stuff,” Doocy said.
Trump told Doocy that some equipment was about 55 years old and that replacement had been discussed with Congress, according to the correspondent.
The Independent reported that communications problems affected 22 regional air traffic control centers. The FAA’s order applied to departures nationwide but did not prevent aircraft already in flight from landing, the outlet said. Officials were working to resolve the technical problem and resume flight operations, according to the report. The outlet also said Democrats were seeking answers about the disruption.
Trump had not himself made public remarks about the outage or posted about it on Truth Social while the ground stop was in effect, The Independent reported. Doocy aired his account of the phone call on Fox News, while Trump’s own post focused on the entertainment industry.
EconoTimes previously cited CBS reporting that sources connected a network update, system reboot and communications loss in its earlier account of the outage’s technical sequence.
