First since 9/11. All planes were grounded in the USA, civil aviation was turned upside down

Last malfunction; It was the most striking sign of the strain on the US air traffic control system, which is struggling with a shortage of several thousand controllers as well as aging technology, equipment and communications problems.

Blaming Congress for not funding a new system that would prevent similar malfunctions, Duffy called for $50 billion for modernization.

“We have an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Duffy said.

The minister continued his words by saying, "Give us the money to repair it."

Duffy also said, "Our switches and routers were overloaded with data and crashed. What crashed was old hardware; I think the question the American people need to answer is: Do you want your Congress to fund this?" he said.

The cut coincided with the budget request, which was reported at different timings in sources; According to one report, in the early hours of Friday, just before the malfunction, and according to another report, the day before the malfunction, the White House and the Ministry of Transportation requested approximately $30.1 billion in additional resources from Congress.

Aiming to renew old airports and air traffic control infrastructure, $10.1 billion of this package was allocated directly to air traffic control modernization.

Stating that tens of thousands of passengers were stranded at airports across the country, Duffy said that he and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss the outage.

The two officials also defended President Trump, who has yet to make a statement nearly five hours after the outage began.

“President Trump immediately gathered people in his office,” Mullin said, adding, “We were in communication.”

Minister Mullin explained that so far there is "zero evidence" that the outage was caused by a cyber attack or an out-of-control AI system.

Rejecting speculation that there was a connection with the comprehensive Microsoft outage that disrupted services around the world or a coordinated cyber attack, Mullin said, "Welcome to Friday the 13th, right? I want everyone to understand that there is no connection between this incident and Microsoft. I know many people have made this inference."

"There was actually no cyber attack," said Mullin, adding: "When we start looking at cyber threats and cyber attacks, usually someone raises their hand and says, 'Hey, we did this.' There is no such communication traffic. We didn't see any traces."

On the other hand, Mullin stated that US security and law enforcement authorities continue to investigate and do not completely rule out any possibility.

"The problem appears to be mechanical, but we're still looking at it," Mullin said.

He added that the National Security Agency (NSA) is also working with the Department of Homeland Security in the investigation.