After a series of air travel incidents, including recent disruptions at a busy New Jersey airport, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, has sought to blame the previous administration for issues plaguing the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden did nothing to fix the system that they knew was broken,” Mr. Duffy said at a news conference on Monday, after a technical outage at Newark Liberty International Airport affected more than 1,000 flights.

Mr. Duffy had a point that the Biden administration “did very little to change the status quo, in the face of numerous problems,” said Robert Poole, the director of transportation policy at the libertarian Reason Foundation. But Mr. Poole said the claim that Biden officials did “nothing” was overly broad.

Moreover, the Biden administration’s approach was not unique. The federal government across multiple administrations and Congresses has taken a reactive approach to aviation policy, often leading to delays in modernization efforts and inadequate staffing and funding.

The current state of air travel, too, could signal the “beginning of a reactionary cycle that has defined the development of the nation’s system of air travel for the past century,” said Sean Seyer, an associate professor at the University of Kansas and author of a book on American civil aviation history.

The F.A.A. acknowledged this month that an “antiquated air traffic control system,” a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers and persistent staffing shortages were affecting air travel. Those issues have existed long before the Trump and Biden administrations.