The Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, says he wants $50 billion to overhaul the US air traffic control system. He warns that failures like Friday's nationwide ground stop will recur without the money. "I want $50 billion," he told a White House briefing on Friday 13 November, NBC News reports.
Answering a question from CNN's Kristen Holmes, he said there would be more such outages.
"You will have more of them unless the American people and the Congress tell us to build, and I can't wait for that"
He also said: "Let's not do a patchwork fix to a system that's critical for every single family."
Duffy said President Trump has asked Congress for $30 billion. That is consistent with the $30.1 billion request Reuters reported earlier. His $50 billion target is larger than the sum requested.
Congress approved $12.5 billion over five years last year, according to Reuters as cited by NBC News. The Jerusalem Post reports Duffy said previous administrations spent about $15 billion over 25 years with little progress. That figure has not been independently checked.
CNN reports Duffy said Thanksgiving travel in a couple of weeks should not be affected.