Democrats demand FAA hearings after nationwide flight ground stop

Democratic members of Congress demanded answers from the Trump administration on Friday regarding a temporary ground stop that halted all flights in the United States. The outage disrupted air travel and prompted questions about the reliability of the nation's air traffic control infrastructure.

Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, California, called the Federal Aviation Administration telecommunications failure unacceptable in a Friday interview. He stated that the agency must build systems that avoid single points of failure. Lieu urged the FAA and the administration to ensure the incident does not recur. He described the event as enormously damaging to public trust in the air system, which he noted is a vital part of the national economy.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the ranking Democrat on the Aviation, Space and Innovation Subcommittee, said she will seek answers from the FAA. In a statement, she noted that sky safety relies on redundancies. She said the cause of the nationwide ground stop warrants a thorough and complete investigation.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Fremont, California, was stranded at Denver International Airport during the outage. He told CNN that lawmakers waited for a briefing from the Trump administration on Friday afternoon.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin addressed reporters at the White House earlier in the day. He identified the issue as a telecommunications outage. Mullin stated the ground stop did not constitute a national security threat. He said there was no indication of a nefarious attack against the United States.

Federal officials have not linked the outage to a specific cause yet. However, they are not ruling out a connection to an artificial intelligence tool used to assist air traffic controllers. The FAA expanded the use of this tool, called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories, or SMART, to all 22 control centers on Tuesday. The system combines about 200 data streams, including flight paths, schedules, and weather, on one cloud-based platform.

Congressional Democrats raised concerns after the platform’s initial rollout in the Washington area. They requested a 90-day pause to better understand the tool’s usage. In a letter to Secretary Duffy, lawmakers cited an egregious lack of transparency. They wrote in October that current air traffic control processes are complex and the impact of AI-enabled tools on safety is unknown.

Air Space Intelligence, the company that created SMART, posted on social media on Friday afternoon. The company stated that the current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of Air Space Intelligence, or their integration with the FAA and air traffic control.