“I’ve spoken with 60 air traffic controllers tonight about what Sean Duffy said at the White House today,” said one journalist. “None of them are buying what he said.”

Air traffic controllers are rejecting US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s explanation for Friday’s nationwide flight ground stop, raising questions about the Trump administration’s account of a communications failure that disrupted air travel across the United States, affecting an estimated 1.5 million travelers.

Washington Examiner homeland security reporter Anna Giaritelli told CNN’s Laura Coates during a Friday night interview that she’d spoken with 60 air traffic controllers about the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground stop, which was just the third to ever occur.

“None of them are buying what he said,” Giaritelli said. “The controllers were saying, ‘We don’t buy that this is actually what’s happening, the reason that Sean Duffy is saying this has happened.’”

  • FlexibleToast
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    14 hours ago

    I work with the US government. So, on one hand that wouldn’t surprise me. But on the other hand for something this important they often have really strict rules and I would need some actual evidence to trust you. Tech debt in these government agencies is insane and it wouldn’t surprise me too much if they just had an ancient system that doesn’t support redundancy or something like that.

    • LibertyLizard@quokk.au
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      14 hours ago

      I remember I had a friend who worked for the DOJ in like 2010 and told me they didn’t have the technology to print more than one page at a time lol. So yeah I wouldn’t be surprised, especially with something so critical where they’re not going to want to switch over when it could cause issues like this.