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Sean Duffy Moves Jesus Painting Amid Another Safety Crisis

Air traffic controllers in Colorado lost contact with more than a dozen aircraft this week—but the transportation secretary seems to have other concerns.

Another U.S. airport suffered a potentially catastrophic communications meltdown this week, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seems to have other concerns.

Namely, moving a painting of Jesus out of a basement at the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

Duffy made a splashy announcement about the picture just as the Federal Aviation Administration launched an investigation into an incident in which Colorado air traffic controllers directing flights across a large section of the Western United States lost contact with pilots for up to six minutes when transmitters went dark.

The outage, which occurred Monday afternoon, comes as Duffy has scrambled to address equipment failures and staffing issues plaguing the air traffic control system, most notably at Newark Liberty International Airport. Controllers guiding pilots into the airport have been hit with three equipment outages in just over two weeks.

The Colorado blackout fulfilled a prediction Duffy made Sunday when he said, “What you see in Newark is going to happen in other places across the country.”

But Thursday also found Duffy busy with other matters—namely, relocating a controversial painting of Jesus at the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

The historic “Christ on the Water” painting became a point of controversy when the Biden administration moved it from its longtime home in the chapel at the academy’s Wiley Hall—after having it professionally conserved and cleaned—to a basement of the chapel.

Midshipmen at the academy reacted jubilantly in April when Duffy announced his intention to return the artwork—which shows Jesus saving sailors and was painted by U.S. Maritime Service veteran Hunter Wood—to its original home.

In a video released by the Department of Transportation Thursday, Duffy, a former Fox Business TV host, enthusiastically declared, “We are moving Jesus out of the basement.”

While the FAA told NPR in a statement that Monday’s blackout lasted “approximately 90 seconds,” ABC Denver7 found that pilots flying to Denver International Airport were unable to speak with controllers for up to six minutes, after speaking to multiple sources.

However, Franklin McIntosh, the deputy chief operating officer at the FAA, dismissed the six-minute claim as “over exaggerated.”

ABC Denver7 said 15 to 20 aircraft were left in the dark until controllers found a way to contact pilots using a frequency intended for situations when a pilot is in distress.

“It’s one thing to lose track of one airplane because you can’t communicate with them, but to lose track of all of the airplanes that you had communication with,” David Riley, a retired air traffic controller who worked in Denver, told ABC Denver7.

“And from my understanding, in this situation, they still had radar coverage, but that’s like watching a car crash happen and not be able to do anything about it.”

Duffy told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday: “I believe the system is safe.”

In response to Newark’s equipment failures—which have led to thousands of flight cancellations—Duffy and the FAA have announced tech upgrades and adjusted flight pacing at Newark, alongside a multi-billion dollar proposal to modernize the entire air traffic control system.

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Erkki ForsterNight News Reporter

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