MIAMI — Three days after a rare nationwide ground stop grounded flights across the country, President Donald Trump broke his silence Sunday, blaming the Biden administration for the state of the nation's air traffic control system — just hours after two more planes collided on a taxiway at Miami International Airport.

In a Sunday morning post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that "The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster," arguing the federal government had spent heavily but left air traffic control infrastructure "older and more fragile than ever." He said his administration has "the knowledge and plan" to fix the system and urged Congress to act, pointing past the $12.5 billion lawmakers approved for the FAA last year, which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said is not enough for the broader modernization the system needs.

Friday's ground stop lasted more than four hours and triggered thousands of cancellations and delays for hundreds of thousands of passengers nationwide — only the third such nationwide stop in US history, following the Sept. 11 attacks and a brief 2023 computer outage. The FAA said its equipment became unstable after a surge of data flooded its network, and that contractor work at one site may be connected, though investigators have not pinned down a root cause.

A Second Scare, This Time on the Ground

The timeline darkened again Saturday night, when a UPS cargo jet collided with a Copa Airlines passenger plane while both were taxiing at Miami International Airport around 9 p.m. Air traffic control audio captured the Copa Boeing 737 pilot reporting his aircraft had been struck; the UPS Boeing 767 crew acknowledged taxiing too far and clipping the Copa jet's wing. The Copa flight was carrying six crew and 166 passengers.

Two people were treated at the scene for minor injuries and did not require hospitalization, according to Miami-Dade Aviation officials. Flights were rerouted to other taxiways, and the airport said operations were not otherwise disrupted. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, and UPS said it would defer to the agency on further details.

"WE NEED CONGRESS TO GIVE THE MONEY, FAST!"

Though unrelated in cause, the collision landed squarely inside the week's broader anxiety over an overtaxed aviation system, compounding scrutiny already on the FAA after Friday's outage. Nationwide ground stops are exceedingly rare, and the back-to-back incidents have renewed pressure on Washington to fund a long-delayed overhaul of air traffic control hardware that officials across both parties have warned is decades old.

Trump's post did not address the Miami collision directly, and the White House did not immediately respond to questions about whether the two incidents are being viewed as connected.

What's Next

The FAA's investigation into Friday's network failure is ongoing, with no timeline yet for a public report. The NTSB's review of the Miami taxiway collision is also in its early stages. The twin incidents are likely to feature prominently when lawmakers return and take up FAA funding questions.