Watch: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Addresses Air Travel Concerns Head-On on 'Meet the Press'

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has had his hands full since assuming the role in late January. A series of recent outages and glitches, particularly at Newark Liberty International Airport, has invited added scrutiny and speculation as to the state of air travel and safety in the U.S.

Duffy joined Kristen Welker on NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday morning to address some of the questions swirling about the ongoing issues and what is being done about them.

Duffy acknowledged and emphasized one of the key issues, that being the age of much of the equipment involved.

.@SecDuffy on the air traffic control issues at Newark airport: "The system is old. This is a system that is 25 — at best — sometimes 50 years old ... We HAVE to fix this." pic.twitter.com/VvtpCLceTX
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 11, 2025

WELKER: What can you tell us about this latest incident? And why does this keep happening?
DUFFY: So, I'll tell you this — the system is old, right? This is a system that's 25 — at best — sometimes 50 years old. The Congress and the country haven't paid attention to it, right? They expect it to work, and so now I think the lights are blinking, the sirens are turning, and they're saying, "Listen, we have to fix this," because what you see in Newark is going to happen in other places across the country. It has to be fixed. And so, what we're having is some telecom issues; we're also having some glitches in our software. As the information comes in, it's overloading some of our lines, and the system goes down. So, I'll just tell you, specifically in Newark, we believe we're going to have it up and running in short order; we're going to be able to fix that glitch. And we feel a little more comfortable about our primary line that gets the data in on...radar, and our redundant line is up and working as well.

The bad news is: There was another ground stop called at Newark Sunday morning. The good news is: Because of the continuing issues at Newark, it's rightly getting some long overdue attention.

SecTrans Sean Duffy Teases Pulling Funds for City Subways, Upgrades to the Federal Aviation System

Duffy was also quick to note that despite the equipment issues, there are multiple redundancies in place and U.S. air space remains the safest, even while the concerns are valid.

"The equipment that we use — much of it we can't buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts," says @SecDuffy.

"Is it safe? Yes, we have multiple redundancies in place ... but we should also recognize we're seeing stress on an old network and it's time to fix it." pic.twitter.com/dKclWjcMoH
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 11, 2025

DUFFY: I'm concerned about the whole airspace. The equipment that we use — much of it, we can't buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And so this is concerning. Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies — multiple redundancies — in place to keep you safe when you fly. But we should also recognize we're seeing...stress on an old network and it's time to fix it.
WELKER: Bottom line: Is it safe to fly in the United States right now?
DUFFY: Listen, we are the safest airspace for sure, and traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation, which is why I take it, my family takes it. But again, that doesn't mean you don't look over the horizon and say, "Hey, if there is a major outage, could that be a risk to life?" Of course it could be — which is why we fix it.

Unfortunately, given that these issues weren't appropriately addressed in the prior administration (or, in fairness, several administrations preceding it), it's going to take some time before everything can be properly updated. But the key is that the process is underway.

.@SecDuffy on the Trump Administration's landmark proposal to modernize air traffic control: "All of this is going to take time, so the key here is — we have to start. We have to begin the process of fixing this system." pic.twitter.com/grRwvwIx0s
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 11, 2025

DUFFY: The problem we have is you can't snap your fingers and fix it. It takes time to build the infrastructure...and I say it's going to be three to four years to build it all, but we're going to focus on Newark first. So we're going to start to see Newark be far more resilient in the near term. But air traffic controllers — we're 3,000 short on air traffic control — I can't snap my fingers and bring in these highly skilled air traffic controllers. All of this is going to take time. So the key here is: We have to start. We have to begin the process of fixing the system. I can't say in two weeks I can have it fixed — that's not the space that we deal with. But I'm going to tell you we are going to begin and...in the months and years ahead, we're going to see real results.

Of course, from the second President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office — and in the face of a heavy focus on reducing federal government bloat — the left (and its media mouthpieces) has/have been attempting to lay the blame squarely on workforce reductions rather than the aging (in some cases ancient) equipment and the failure to properly address staffing needs. Duffy called that narrative out for what it is: horse hockey.

.@SecDuffy dispels the Fake News: "In the safety mission of the FAA like air traffic controllers, NO ONE was cut. We actually have staffed up. We hired more air traffic controllers during this time." pic.twitter.com/6izP6VyCaK
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 11, 2025

DUFFY: In the safety mission of the FAA, like air traffic controllers, no one was cut. We actually have staffed up — we've hired more air traffic controllers during this time. There were probationary workers that were let go, those are employees who were there less than a year — and again, we excluded the safety positions — most of them have come back. So, again...the FAA has 46,000 employees, and if you lost 350, is this affecting our safety mission? There's a lot of things the FAA does, but for us, safety is key, so no, we've retained all those safety positions.

Yes, there are legitimate concerns being raised. Thankfully, the Trump administration is well aware of them and focused on addressing them.

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