New York Governor Kathy Hochul has called for US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to resign or be removed from office by President Donald Trump following a nationwide aviation disruption that forced a ground stop on Friday.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Hochul criticised Duffy’s handling of problems within the country’s aviation system, pointing to persistent air traffic controller shortages and repeated communication failures.
Kathy Hochul says Sean Duffy ‘more focused on starring in his own reality show’
She accused the Transportation Secretary of focusing more on his public image than addressing serious challenges facing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“From chronic air traffic controller shortages to repeated communications breakdowns, serious lapses in our aviation system have become a pattern on Sean Duffy’s watch,” Hochul said.
She added that Duffy had been “more focused on starring in his own reality show than addressing the crisis at his agency”.
Hochul urged President Trump to remove Duffy “immediately” if he did not step down voluntarily.
Hochul calls for full investigation into aviation disruption
The New York governor also called on Congress to investigate the circumstances surrounding Friday’s nationwide ground stop, stressing the importance of public confidence in aviation safety ahead of the busy holiday travel period.
“With millions of Americans preparing to travel for the holidays, families deserve answers and confidence in the safety of our skies,” she said.
Hochul further insisted that Congress must conduct a comprehensive investigation to establish what went wrong and prevent similar incidents in the future.
Sean Duffy blames faulty equipment for nationwide ground stop
Responding to concerns over the disruption, Duffy said on Saturday that the FAA did not believe a cyberattack was responsible for the communications failure.
According to the Transportation Secretary, the incident began during routine maintenance at a remote FAA facility, where a contractor was transferring telecommunications infrastructure from traditional copper wiring to fibre-optic connections.
Duffy explained that the transition, which has been taking place across the United States for decades, encountered a problem involving either human error or defective equipment.
“Either through contractor error or a faulty piece of equipment, that router that was being replaced as we switched from copper to fibre, it started flooding other routers in our air traffic control system,” he said.
He revealed that the affected router generated more than 1,000 connection attempts every four to five seconds, overwhelming parts of the system.
The disruption affected communications between air traffic controllers and aircraft, while also causing problems with radar feeds.
As a precaution, authorities temporarily closed the affected airspace to ensure flight safety.
Duffy said operations returned to normal after officials isolated the maintenance work responsible for the disruption.
He ruled out a cyberattack as the likely explanation, describing the incident as a failure of the FAA’s existing infrastructure.
“This was an FAA system that didn’t meet the moment,” he said.
FAA rules out cyberattack and AI-related incident
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford also addressed the incident during Saturday’s press conference, attributing the nationwide ground stop to faulty equipment.
Bedford dismissed suggestions that the disruption was caused by malicious activity or artificial intelligence-related interference.
“We see zero evidence of anything nefarious, and zero evidence of anything AI-related,” he said.
He confirmed that investigators were working to identify the defective equipment responsible for the failure.
Bedford added that the agency would release further information once its technical investigation and root cause analysis had been completed.