The Republicans are having a field say on social media taking digs at US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg after a computer system failure at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) caused all domestic flights across the nation to be grounded on Wednesday.   

“THE FAA is experiencing an outage that is impacting the update of NOTAMS. All flights are unable to be released at this time,” the FAA said in a statement announcing the problem.

Also Read | What is Notice To Air Mission System or NOTAM?

“The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System. We are performing final validation checks and repopulating the system now,” said the FAA in an update issued shortly after their initial announcement. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected. We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.” 

Buttigieg has been in contact with the FAA regarding the crisis from the time it started as his official Twitter ID tweeted at the time, “I have been in touch with FAA this morning about an outage affecting a key system for providing safety information to pilots. FAA is working to resolve this issue swiftly and safely so that air traffic can resume normal operations, and will continue to provide updates.”

Also Read | FAA orders airlines to halt all US domestic flight departures till 9 am ET after massive system outage

However, the GOP used this opportunity to attack Buttigieg, mocking his nickname “Mayor Pete.” “Breaking – All flights nationwide have been grounded – the #FAA is facing a computer outage.

Yet another major blow to incompetent Transportation Sect Mayor Pete and people who get important jobs with no experience to check some identity politics boxes,” Donald Trump Jr. said.

“Every plane in America is currently grounded due to a system error. Mayor Pete, bravo. This is what happens when you hire clueless liberals for jobs they aren’t qualified to do,” Rep. Lauren Boebart wrote.

Former Republican nominee for Maryland Kimberly Klacik tweeted: “Keep in mind. Mayor Pete isn’t the Secretary of Transportation because he had experience for the job. Mayor Pete is the Secretary of Transportation because he dropped out of the race for president and…he’s gay. Those are the facts.”

Pro-Trump supporter Charles R Downs wrote: “When Pete Buttigieg was Mayor of South Bend, Dominos had to fill South Bend’s potholes due to Mayor Pete’s incompetence. How was Pete Buttigieg qualified to be Transportation Secretary in the first place? After today’s FAA computer failure, Joe Biden has some explaining to do.”

The temporary ground stop put in place by the FAA till 9 am ET has been lifted and flight traffic is slowly resuming across the country. 

“Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted. We continue to look into the cause of the initial problem,” the FAA tweeted.