(FreedomWire.org) – Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is under fire yet again after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a rare and alarming full ground stop for all U.S. flights Wednesday morning.
At 8 a.m. Eastern, there were more than 2,500 delayed flights within, into or out of the United States, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware, exceeding the number of all delayed flights on the previous day. More than 150 have been canceled. Those numbers are likely to grow.
More than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off in the U.S. today, mostly domestic trips, and about 1,840 international flights expected to fly to the U.S., according to aviation data firm Cirium.
Biden addressed the FAA issue Wednesday before leaving the White House. He said he had just been briefed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told him they still had not identified what went wrong.
“I just spoke to Buttigieg. They don’t know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him about 10 minutes,” Biden said. “I told him to report directly to me when they find out. Air traffic can still land safely, just not take off right now. We don’t know what the cause of it is.”
Since taking office in early 2021, Buttigieg has been mired in controversy and his lack of transportation experience has been repeatedly highlighted with a number of crises. During the supply chain crisis of 2021, when thousands of fully loaded shipping containers were sitting offshore, Buttigieg took off for months of paternity leave without appointing a deputy. During negotiations that nearly resulted in a devastating and economically disruptive nation wide rail strike, Buttigieg was on vacation in Portugal.