The U.S. government has attributed the mass suspension of flights to a failure in its outdated air traffic control system, blaming the defect on mechanisms that manage flight routes and airport operations.
Official Criticism
According to reports published by El País, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated before Congress that "the current system is obsolete" and cannot ensure the necessary safety to maintain operational airline networks. He asserted that at least $30 billion are required to fully modernize the national air traffic control system.
Duffy emphasized that this situation constitutes a "national security issue," highlighting that technical fixes implemented so far have been insufficient to resolve the critical problems detected over the past weeks.
Technical Context
No detailed information has been provided about what specific types of failures affect the system's operation, nor are there concrete data such as incident dates or exact numbers of flights canceled. The statement does not include independently verified technical evidence, and its content relies exclusively on an official source without independent validation.
The original report was published on the website of the newspaper El País, which reported Duffy's statement but did not offer additional technical analysis or empirical data about the current operation of the U.S. airport system.
The official statement directly attributes operational problems to the outdated state of the system, without mentioning possible alternative causes such as weather conditions, airline failures, or administrative limitations. It has not been confirmed whether independent investigations support this technical conclusion.