U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attends a press conference on the impact of the ongoing federal government shutdown on air travel, at LaGuardia Airport in the Queens borough of New York City, U.S., October 28, 2
Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, attempted to hold a new press conference about Friday's nationwide grounding disaster, but was delayed after the address was beset with technical issues, leading CNN pundits to trash the incident as "frankly, embarrassing."
On Friday, the FAA ordered all flights in the U.S. to be grounded, with Duffy later claiming in a press conference that the agency's machinery "got overloaded with data and they started to give us inconsistencies in the data." The shutdown ultimately lifted after four hours at around 8:15 p.m., the longest of its kind since 9/11, causing around 10,000 flights to be canceled. Duffy also claimed that such issues would continue due to the FAA's aging infrastructure, and demanded billions of dollars in order to fix it.
On Saturday morning, Duffy attempted to hold another press conference on the matter, this time on his own and not flanked by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. As he tried to begin speaking, however, the audio from the speech appeared to cut in and out, and become overwhelmed by static noises, leaving the secretary once again at the mercy of technical issues.
As this new incident played out in real time, CNN's Wolf Blitzer provided some running commentary, making reference to the issues with the FAA's technology being outdated.
"They're clearly havingsome technical issues over thereat the Department ofTransportation," Blitzer said. "So there's beena pause in the statement, but we'll continue to monitor this... You heard some technical problems that werevery, very audible earlier.Looks like the microphone couldbe a problem right there. Alittle awkward. Major newsconference like this with theSecretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, and the FAAadministrator, Brian Bedford,about to give us some newinformation about thisinvestigation into thisdisaster... Let's make sure that theyfix that microphone. I hopeit's not antiquated technologythat they have there from the70s or 80s, that it's newtechnology, that microphone thatthey can work with."
Blitzer then passed over to White House correspondent Brian Todd, who was even less forgiving of the situation.
"Wolf, it's awkward andfrankly embarrassing, andreally somewhat symbolic ofeverything that's happened overthe past 24 hours," Todd said. Uh, justwaiting for some answers from Sean Duffy, a lot of pointedquestions coming his way andcoming the way of the FAAadministrator, Brian Bedford,who we have not heard fromuntil, you know, we're going tohear from him in a few minutes,presumably. But he had not beenheard from at all during thiscrisis, and neither has President Trump."