June 2, 2025 • 24 mins
In this episode of One Thing Trump Did we take a look at mounting concerns over the nation's air traffic control and air travel infrastructure, and whether or not recent moves by the Trump administration have made matters worse. Jeremy is joined by Seth Kaplan, founder of Airline Weekly and a reporter with Nexstar in Harrisburg, PA. #FAA #FTSB #airtraffic #aviation #planes #planecrash #safety #Trump
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to One Thing Trump Did, available exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson and if you're new
to this podcast. We pick one thing every week coming
out of the Trump White House because there is so
much and we try to focus on it, learn as
much as we can about it with somebody who knows
what they're talking about. And our one thing this week
is what's happening with the nation's air traffic control system?
(00:38):
Multiple failures at airports following that deadly mid air collision
between an American Airlines passenger plane and a military helicopter
in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
In January.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
That accident brought to light significant issues with the nation's
air traffic control system, including aging infrastructure, staffing shortages, and
overworked controllers. Since then, in addition to a number of
plane crashes around the country, there've also been scary radar outages,
particularly at Newark Liberty International Airport outside New York City.
(01:10):
The Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has blamed the Biden
administration for passing the buck on upgrading aging infrastructure, and
he's promised to modernize the system.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
The system we have here, it's not worth saving I
don't need to preserve any.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Of this is too old.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
You got a nineteen sixty seven Volkswagen Beetle that you're
using for transportation. I don't want to preserve the Beetle.
I actually want to build a brand new car.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, joining me now to help us understand what's going
on and what's politics is Seth Kaplan, founder of Airline
Weekly and a reporter with Nextstar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Seth great to have.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
You on a pleasure Jeremy, thanks for inviting me on.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, let's start with the aging infrastructure. What kind of
systems are they using across the country and why haven't
they been updated over the years.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
One thing everybody could agree on is the system looks
nothing like what it would look like if you just
designed it from scratch today. This is a legacy system
with things added on over the years. So you'll hear
some people say occasionally this is all from the nineteen sixties.
Well that's not entirely true. But it's not entirely false either,
because they've sort of added on to an old system
(02:20):
over to years, and as with a lot of systems,
you have to make it what's called backwards compatible where
you know, the new thing can essentially still work with
the old thing, And so there have been some modernizations
over the years. I mean, things are different now from
how they were many decades ago. On the other hand, though, yeah,
when you hear people talk about, you know, they still
have the controllers, still look at these green screens with
(02:41):
little thoughts on them, and sort of old radar doing
a scan every so many seconds, that is true, and
so that's really been a big challenge over the years.
I mean, they're funding challenges as all the rest of it,
which I'm sure we can talk about, but fundamentally, more
than anything else, you're just kind of always adding on
to this old system rather than just sort of coming
(03:02):
out with a clean sheeting.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And is it that because just with the nature of
air travel, it's not quite twenty four hours a day
in passenger planes, but it basically is that it's just
too hard to kind of take it offline to upgrade
the system.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, and because you're always gonna have airplanes that are
thirty years old or more still flying, so you can't
come out with a new system that relies on all
new what are called avionics and the cockpits of airplanes,
you know, the systems on the airplanes themselves, because the
systems always get have to talk to those old airplanes
that are going to cycle through. And that's never going
to change, right, I mean, you know, twenty years from now,
(03:35):
the planes that are thirty years old today won't be flying,
but planes that are thirty years old then will be.
And so so there's always, yeah, this trade off between
what we would all dream about in a perfect world
and what's actually possible given those realities, including the one
you mentioned that we can't just shut down the system
for a year to roll out something new.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
But they're going to have to do something, especially at
this point. So how do they upgrade the system? How
long will it take to up grade the system to
where they want it to be.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, there's something called next Gen. It's the next generation
air traffic control system that has been talked about for
about more than two decades now that this has been
going on, and some people joke that it's already yesterday,
Jen And officially there's this date of about twenty thirty
that they hope to have it essentially rolled out. Nobody
(04:26):
really believes that it's going to be entirely rolled out then.
But what's undoubtable is that an indisputable is that all
of these recent events do definitely put this in the
spotlight and help the people who are advocating for more
funding and for all the things that have sort of
been kicked down the road for so many years, precisely
because things had been running. At least from a standpoint
(04:47):
of people actually dying in commercially, iron crash is relative
rather well for the past couple decades until this year.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
What about the staff shortages? How long has that been
an issue?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And I should note they're also so having air traffic
controller staff shortages in Canada in addition to the United States,
so this is not something that's unique to the US.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
But what's going on there?
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yeah, part of it's just a demographic issue, right that
you have a fewer young people right now and people
aging out who that's a challenge in other industries too,
as you said, it a challenge in other countries as well.
But yeah, this is something that for years has been
bubbling up and at some point you get into kind
of this vicious cycle where and you mentioned Newark, and
we could talk more about Newark if you'd like, but
(05:29):
where you have people who say they just feel burned out,
where those same people, if the staffing were better, might
still be able to work, but then they're calling in sick.
And so what is a certain shortage becomes an even
bigger shortage precisely because of the shortage and people who
say that they're just leaving the field because it's just
too difficult.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
The Trump administration also laid off hundreds of FA employees
in February. How much did that contribute to this problem?
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Well, and this is an interesting thing, Jeremany. Sometimes in
history you're you're you're fortunate enough from an analytical standpoint
to live it in a very stable time where not
much changes, and then there's one thing happens, and then
then you can kind of measure like if something else
in that same realm happened, then this thing probably caused
that thing. What's difficult now is it's hard to control
for anything because so many different things have happened. Right
(06:17):
the crash, especially the American Airlines crash from the flame
time which is on DCA, but also all of these
other incidents, what has happened at Newark and oh yes,
all those layoffs you mentioned at the FAA so hard
to say what, you know, what's the cause of what's
the effect of all of these things. But it's not
hard to say that all of those things have mattered.
(06:38):
And certainly, you know, you talk to people of the
FAA and and that wasn't helpful. Even if you can't say,
as some people might want to say that caused all
of what's going on now.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Well, and the layoffs happened after the crash at DCA also,
but they happened before. What's been happening at Newark? So
what's going on at Newark? And why is it specific
to Newark Airport? I mean, I know it's happening in
a couple of other places, but mainly it's happening at
Newark Airport.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
These outages on the radar.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Well, yeah, radar outage is Jeremy that that in aviation
terms are long periods of time, even though they don't
sound like it in the rest of the world. You know,
ninety seconds at a time radar going down. One of
them happened in the middle of the night, not much impact.
One happened in the middle of the day, and quite
clearly everybody who is fortunate, Although there are redundancies in
place that nothing went catastrophically wrong. And so these are
(07:32):
things where you know, you've got some of the same
equipment that exists in other places, but for whatever reason
it failed in Newark and in a very scary way.
That has now caused the government to say, look, we
just we just can't have as many flights there as
we've had. We need to build in more margin for error.
And so, through a combination of airlines kind of voluntarily
(07:54):
reducing their own flights and directives, now we have a
far fewer flights at Newark than we had previously. In
a world we're generally speaking, more people are flying than
I've ever flown before.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Just to make it comparison to what we do every
week on the middle you know, we have my We
have a com rex. It's like a device that allows
the signal to transmit from where I am to our
studio in Illinois, and then they have two comrexes to
go to Washington, DC to get it up to the
satellite for distribution, just in case one of them goes down.
(08:27):
You know, we have lost our entire phone system at
times it just drops all of a sudden, and then
it comes back but that's not putting anybody's life at risk.
It's just kind of surprising to me that there's not
more redundancy already built in than this where that could
even be an issue when the radar goes down, you.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Think, okay, we just go to the backup.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Now, exactly. And that's the idea of redundance, these backups
and backups to backups. And with the crash at Reagan,
I think a lot of us, including those of us
who feel like we know a fair amount about this industry,
were surprised at some of the things that were not
previously understood about sort of how little margin for error
(09:06):
was built in that perhaps at black Hawk was seventy
five feet or so higher than it should have been,
but the idea that it was even a matter of
just seventy five feet that could have caused a catastrophic
crash like that surprised a lot of people. And in fact,
those things have changed already there And so yes, the
redundancies are there, but as you said, Jeremy, whether they're
(09:27):
there to the extent that they should be for something
that can kill people as opposed to comrex in your studio,
that's very much under the microscope right now.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
There was also a plane crash in San Diego last month.
Six people died, and some of the issues that the
NTSP has pointed to were malfunctioning runway lights and a
broken weather alert system. So when we hear that in
the context of everything else that's going on, it sounds
like there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be updated.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
No question. And we saw again sort of the for
lack of a better way of saying, the kind of
the Marquee crash that really shook everybody was at American Airlines,
because that's that's a flight eddy of us feel like
we could have been on right. But there have been
there have been others as well, and I should say
this too again sort of going back to like like
you know what causes, you know what's new and what's not.
We do have this heightened sensitivity now to anything that happens,
(10:15):
understandably so because of what happened back in late January
at Reagan Airport, and so you know, crashes like the
one in San Diego that's not entirely unique. You know,
there have been other times when when again for lack
of a better word, lack of a more sensitive way
of saying it. You know that those smaller numbers of
people have died in a plane crash that's not a
commercial airline crash that causes headlines throughout the country and
(10:38):
where we don't necessarily collectively pay as much attention to it.
So part of it now is that we are paying
attention more to things that rightfully so, by the way,
but that we weren't paying attention to in the fast
So that's entirely knew what happened in San Diego, but
but absolutely it highlights the issue well.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And by the way, there have actually been we are
paying a lot of attention, but there have actually been
fewer crashes this year overall by this point than there
were last year, which is interesting.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Right And so you know, and people have asked me,
for example, you know, what's the safest airline those kinds
of things you can imagine people in my life, and
I say, you know, that's a hard question to answer
for a relatively good reason, which is that things like
what happened in January have become so rare that we
don't really have a sample size to be able to
(11:28):
make that kind of that kind of analysis. Right back
in the nineteen nineties as recently as that, which is
all that long ago. You know, you'd have a few
fatal plane crashes a year in America, right and you
could say, back then you could look at it and say, oh, yeah,
USAir has had you know, a few plane Charlotte and Pittsburgh,
you know, are they more dangerous than Delta? You know?
And reasonable people could disagree about the answer to that,
(11:48):
But there was a sample size, whereas now it just
is so rare. And as you said, we had that
one awful crash. But overall, yes, the system is is
still by in terms of most ways that we can measure,
about as safe as it's ever been, which is not
to say it's what it should be.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
What about the controllers who are on the job set,
they've been complaining that they're overworked and overstressed. What do
we know about that and has that changed with Trump
coming in or is it pretty much something that just
existed long before.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Well, there's no question that exist died before. These are
not these are not new complaints, And and and one
thing you always have to kind of look at with
with with any kind of management labor relations candidly is
is you have to try to separate out, uh, you know,
very legitimate complaints, and these are folks who obviously have
those from On the other hand, sometimes those legitimate complaints
(12:42):
can also be used to advance other other agendas.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Right, get paid more or something like that, get.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Get paid more exactly. So so these so these are
these are unionized workers who have a very hard job,
and they they deserve everything, everything they get and uh,
you know clearly things are not are not okay for them.
But but but we just have to recognize that's an
important part of the analysis. Is that is that you know,
every group of worker is going to say if you
don't they understand that you want to make an argument
that that's going to resonate with somebody else. You don't
(13:09):
want to say you should do this because it's what
I want. They're smart enough to say you should do
this because it's what you should want. And many of
the things that is true. But at the same time,
these are people who are like anybody else, like any
of us, you know, interested in you know, getting paid
as much as we think we're worth and that sort
of thing. So not new complaints, but definitely a new
environment here in terms of the federal government's approach toward
(13:32):
federal workers in general.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Well, and the administration is now offering twenty percent bonuses
for people in the air traffic control world who are
near retirement to get them to stay on the job
and get their salary plus twenty percent.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
You think that's going to make a difference.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Do you think that these Yeah, the attention bonuses and
people that are that are near retirement saying okay, final
work another a couple of years.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Yeah, I mean there are kinds of incentives that that work,
that shows you what a priority this has become. Set
against the backdrop of what's happening with everybody, Well, people
getting paid to leave, and these are people getting paid
extra to stay.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
We'll stay with us because we're going to talk about
solutions in a moment. One Thing Trump did with Airline
Weekly founder Seth Kaplan will be right back. Welcome back
(14:36):
to One Thing Trump did exclusively on the Middle podcast feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. This episode, we're talking about mounting issues
with the country's air traffic control infrastructure and problems for
air travel. I'm joined by journalist Seth Kaplan, founder of
Airline Weekly and a reporter with Nextstar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Seth,
(14:56):
let's talk about one thing that is being reported on
now that they're talking about using AI to help alleviate
the controller gap or to help bolster safety measures for
air traffic control.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
What can you tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (15:07):
AI clearly has done all kinds of things in the
past few years, both good and bad, but but a
lot good that uh, that none of us would have
imagined not too many years ago, and and and yes,
you know, machine learning just just just just uh, you know,
these things that computers we think might be able to
detect patterns and so forth, that that that human brains
(15:29):
and eyes can't detect. The idea is that that that
those same kinds of algorithms could help us figure out,
you know, what really matters more and what doesn't matter
as much in terms of spacing aircraft apart from each other,
those sorts of things, things that are still done rather
manually in a world of so much other automation and
so so the idea here is is can that AI
(15:51):
still rather new technology and that's the part that's also
scary here, right, but but one that's helped in other realms.
Can it help with this in a way that that
number one makes things safer, but also over the long term,
and you know this is an important goal too, just
makes things more efficient because airplanes right now fly and
(16:12):
all kinds of crazy patterns in the sky also because
of those old systems. That's the biggest impact, by the way, Jeremy,
on all of us. Right again, we talked despite it
all the flying is still really safe by any measure
compared to any other time in history, all of that,
but it's really inefficient, right, It's really bad for the
(16:33):
environment compared to what it could be if airplanes could
just fly in straight lines from their origins or destination
rather than going in all kinds of out of the
way patterns because precisely of all this old equipment and
that sort of thing. So ideally automation could help make
things not only safer but more efficient. Get us who
we're going more quickly, burn less fuel.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And they're even talking about using it to have you know,
just one pilot on the plane instead of two. Right now,
I guess we're acquire a co pilot for most flights,
and in this case maybe AI would take the other seat,
which made me a little skeptical at first, but then
I took a waim the other day for the first time,
and I was like, oh, okay, I don't feel so
bad about this. This driver seems pretty good. In fact,
(17:14):
it was a little bit aggressive at times making some
lane changes. So Seth, do you think that there are
people who have actually stopped flying because of all of
this worry in the last few months.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
That goes back to what I said earlier about just
so many new things variables that are hard to control
that it's hard to measure, right if only that had happened,
but we weren't. Also, Oh, by the way, in a
trade war that has people in some cases actually suffering economically,
in other cases avoiding certain kinds of travel to the
United States, for example, from other countries that would be
(17:48):
easier to measure in the real world. All of that
is happening. But I can say, Jeremy that airlines did say,
even before things got to quite where they are right now,
that there was some kind of not huge, huge, but
measurable impact on consumer travel demand in the wake of
the airline crash. So I think it's fair to say
there's a non zero number of people. There's somebody not
(18:10):
flying today who would have flown perhaps if not for that,
even if that's probably not the biggest force right now
in the wake of everything else I described, And even if,
by the way, that might not be a wise choice
by that person, depending on what else they're doing instead
of flying. I tell people in my own life that
all the time they say, well should I fly? I say, well,
what's your alternative? Are you going to stay home the
(18:31):
rest of your life? Because well, okay, I guess that
would be safer, wouldn't be terribly interesting. But if if
you're saying, should I fly instead of driving?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
We know this not that well.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
And even if a small percentage of people have decided
that they're not flying, imagine the airlines are not happy
about that. What kind of leverage do they have with
regards to the air traffic control system? Are they knocking
down on the door of Sean Duffy's saying you better
figure this out? Are they do they have to pay
for some of the upgrades? Like how do the airlines
fit in to this?
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Well, that's long been a big part of this, right
is It's been this kind of chicken and egg issue
of over the decades. This goes back way before the
current administration, way before the last administration, but the government
sort of saying, okay, airlines, you need to pay for
some of this. You need to put certain kinds of
avionics on your aircraft, for example, so that the new stuff,
you know, actually does what it's supposed to do. And
(19:20):
airlines basically saying, well, you know, why should we invest
this money if it's taking forever to put the infrastructure
in place that needs to be there for the new
stuff on the airplanes to work. So they're a very
big part of the process. And certain airlines, Delta notably
over the years, is one that's that's sort of argued, hey,
we can't just you know, throw our hands up and
say this is this is somebody else's problem. We need
(19:41):
to be active about this. I mentioned them, but they're
certainly certainly not the other the only ones United and
others active in that regard. So they're a big part
of the process.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
So you know, this show is called one Thing Trump Did.
The Trump administration is blaming the Biden administration for the
situation with air traffic control and vice versa to some degree.
What do we know about what's true? Is there blame
to be assigned to one administration or the other for
(20:10):
this problem that we're facing right now.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Well, in this industry, you could also probably blame the
Ford administration, right, or the administration for some of the
things that are wrong. So so to try to sign
cause it effect. And that is something we tend to see,
maybe from this president more than even others, is the
you know, whatever, whatever bad happens must be the previous administration,
whatever good happens, must be something that was caused sometime
(20:33):
after January twentieth and and the reality is, this is
the situation that's been building up over a long time.
On one hand, all kinds of problems. On the other hand, again,
you know, you add it all up, and flying is
still really really safe, safer than it than it used
to be, thanks largely by the way to automation, right,
and so so we have to be careful about that too.
(20:54):
Is when people say, as you said, with weimo right,
scary but right, so with this too, the idea of
not having two pilots in a cockpit, yeah, that scares me.
On the other hand, other kinds of automation have helped
get us to this rather safe environment that we're right now,
all right.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I want to ask you one more thing, Seth. And
it's sort of unrelated to this, but we kind of
got into it a moment ago, which is airline butts
in seats. They say, like, how many people are flying
on these planes? We are hearing that foreign tourism is
way down because of the tariffs, certainly from Canada, also
from Europe. People just not happy with Trump. They don't
(21:31):
want to come to the United States. They're worried that,
you know, there's going to be some problem with immigration
when they get here. How is that affecting the airlines
right now?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Well, right now when you try to net it all out,
and when I say all, I'm including cheaper fuel, which
might oil is cheaper, probably partly because of all the
instability in the world right now, right but we have
to offset all those challenges with that. Airlines are paying
a lot less for this, this really important thing that
(22:01):
they buy. So they are still doing rather well right now.
And because feel is so much cheaper. I can't even
sit here and say that they're doing any worse bottom
line than they might have been doing if not for
all of this. But if we're just talking about travel,
demand revenue, no question that it adds up to something meaningful,
albeit not devastating. We do see airlines making small trims
(22:23):
in their schedules, especially late summer that part of the
year when in America, especially schools kind of in the
South and the West, go back early in August. In
airlines that maybe we're a little more ambitious about what
they thought they could get in terms of butts and
seats late in the summer, dialing it down a little bit,
but only in small ways right now, because also, Jeremy,
this is an industry that's still kind of recovering from
(22:45):
a shortage of aircraft that it had for so long.
And so that's part of it too, is that they
were a growth mode for all kinds of reasons, including
that they were just kind of playing catch up from
their perspective.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, interesting that the cost of oil matters more to
them in some ways than the amount of people who
want to fly on their planes, or at.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Least as much. Yeah, and and and and the the
precise answer, and that's a whole other show, is you know,
different airlines maybe care more about one than the other.
Right there, Airlines who who really depend on on premium revenue.
It's all about you know, how many people are flying
business class across the Atlantic. There are other people who
it's it's uh, other airlines that carry rather price sensitive
travelers from the Midwest to I don't know, put to
(23:28):
gord to Florida and places like that, and and who
who maybe don't usually charge all that much anyway, and
and if they can save on fuel, uh, then then
then that's a big deal. But to one extent or another, Yeah,
it's it's all. The bottom line is literally that it's
it's it's revenues minus costs. And and what matters most
of all is uh is where they end up there,
(23:49):
not how they get there.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That is Seid Kaplan, who is founder of Airline Weekly
and a reporter with Nextar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Seth thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Thank you, Jeremy, and thanks to you for listening to
One Thing Trump Did. It was produced by Harrison Patino.
Our next middle episode will be in your podcast feed
later this week. We're going to be talking about the
role that Christianity plays in our politics. It is an
encore episode from last year, but it's so good we're
playing it again. It's actually our most downloaded podcast episode ever,
and I will be not able to do a live
(24:19):
show because I am on a bike ride from San
Francisco to Los Angeles for AIDS life Cycle and you
can learn more about that at listen tooth middle dot com.
If you like this podcast, please rate it wherever you
get your podcasts and write a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Talk to you soon.
Welcome to One Thing Trump Did, available exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson and if you're new
to this podcast. We pick one thing every week coming
out of the Trump White House because there is so
much and we try to focus on it, learn as
much as we can about it with somebody who knows
what they're talking about. And our one thing this week
is what's happening with the nation's air traffic control system?
(00:38):
Multiple failures at airports following that deadly mid air collision
between an American Airlines passenger plane and a military helicopter
in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
In January.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
That accident brought to light significant issues with the nation's
air traffic control system, including aging infrastructure, staffing shortages, and
overworked controllers. Since then, in addition to a number of
plane crashes around the country, there've also been scary radar outages,
particularly at Newark Liberty International Airport outside New York City.
(01:10):
The Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has blamed the Biden
administration for passing the buck on upgrading aging infrastructure, and
he's promised to modernize the system.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
The system we have here, it's not worth saving I
don't need to preserve any.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Of this is too old.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
You got a nineteen sixty seven Volkswagen Beetle that you're
using for transportation. I don't want to preserve the Beetle.
I actually want to build a brand new car.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, joining me now to help us understand what's going
on and what's politics is Seth Kaplan, founder of Airline
Weekly and a reporter with Nextstar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Seth great to have.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
You on a pleasure Jeremy, thanks for inviting me on.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, let's start with the aging infrastructure. What kind of
systems are they using across the country and why haven't
they been updated over the years.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
One thing everybody could agree on is the system looks
nothing like what it would look like if you just
designed it from scratch today. This is a legacy system
with things added on over the years. So you'll hear
some people say occasionally this is all from the nineteen sixties.
Well that's not entirely true. But it's not entirely false either,
because they've sort of added on to an old system
(02:20):
over to years, and as with a lot of systems,
you have to make it what's called backwards compatible where
you know, the new thing can essentially still work with
the old thing, And so there have been some modernizations
over the years. I mean, things are different now from
how they were many decades ago. On the other hand, though, yeah,
when you hear people talk about, you know, they still
have the controllers, still look at these green screens with
(02:41):
little thoughts on them, and sort of old radar doing
a scan every so many seconds, that is true, and
so that's really been a big challenge over the years.
I mean, they're funding challenges as all the rest of it,
which I'm sure we can talk about, but fundamentally, more
than anything else, you're just kind of always adding on
to this old system rather than just sort of coming
(03:02):
out with a clean sheeting.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And is it that because just with the nature of
air travel, it's not quite twenty four hours a day
in passenger planes, but it basically is that it's just
too hard to kind of take it offline to upgrade
the system.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, and because you're always gonna have airplanes that are
thirty years old or more still flying, so you can't
come out with a new system that relies on all
new what are called avionics and the cockpits of airplanes,
you know, the systems on the airplanes themselves, because the
systems always get have to talk to those old airplanes
that are going to cycle through. And that's never going
to change, right, I mean, you know, twenty years from now,
(03:35):
the planes that are thirty years old today won't be flying,
but planes that are thirty years old then will be.
And so so there's always, yeah, this trade off between
what we would all dream about in a perfect world
and what's actually possible given those realities, including the one
you mentioned that we can't just shut down the system
for a year to roll out something new.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
But they're going to have to do something, especially at
this point. So how do they upgrade the system? How
long will it take to up grade the system to
where they want it to be.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, there's something called next Gen. It's the next generation
air traffic control system that has been talked about for
about more than two decades now that this has been
going on, and some people joke that it's already yesterday,
Jen And officially there's this date of about twenty thirty
that they hope to have it essentially rolled out. Nobody
(04:26):
really believes that it's going to be entirely rolled out then.
But what's undoubtable is that an indisputable is that all
of these recent events do definitely put this in the
spotlight and help the people who are advocating for more
funding and for all the things that have sort of
been kicked down the road for so many years, precisely
because things had been running. At least from a standpoint
(04:47):
of people actually dying in commercially, iron crash is relative
rather well for the past couple decades until this year.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
What about the staff shortages? How long has that been
an issue?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And I should note they're also so having air traffic
controller staff shortages in Canada in addition to the United States,
so this is not something that's unique to the US.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
But what's going on there?
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yeah, part of it's just a demographic issue, right that
you have a fewer young people right now and people
aging out who that's a challenge in other industries too,
as you said, it a challenge in other countries as well.
But yeah, this is something that for years has been
bubbling up and at some point you get into kind
of this vicious cycle where and you mentioned Newark, and
we could talk more about Newark if you'd like, but
(05:29):
where you have people who say they just feel burned out,
where those same people, if the staffing were better, might
still be able to work, but then they're calling in sick.
And so what is a certain shortage becomes an even
bigger shortage precisely because of the shortage and people who
say that they're just leaving the field because it's just
too difficult.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
The Trump administration also laid off hundreds of FA employees
in February. How much did that contribute to this problem?
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Well, and this is an interesting thing, Jeremany. Sometimes in
history you're you're you're fortunate enough from an analytical standpoint
to live it in a very stable time where not
much changes, and then there's one thing happens, and then
then you can kind of measure like if something else
in that same realm happened, then this thing probably caused
that thing. What's difficult now is it's hard to control
for anything because so many different things have happened. Right
(06:17):
the crash, especially the American Airlines crash from the flame
time which is on DCA, but also all of these
other incidents, what has happened at Newark and oh yes,
all those layoffs you mentioned at the FAA so hard
to say what, you know, what's the cause of what's
the effect of all of these things. But it's not
hard to say that all of those things have mattered.
(06:38):
And certainly, you know, you talk to people of the
FAA and and that wasn't helpful. Even if you can't say,
as some people might want to say that caused all
of what's going on now.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Well, and the layoffs happened after the crash at DCA also,
but they happened before. What's been happening at Newark? So
what's going on at Newark? And why is it specific
to Newark Airport? I mean, I know it's happening in
a couple of other places, but mainly it's happening at
Newark Airport.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
These outages on the radar.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Well, yeah, radar outage is Jeremy that that in aviation
terms are long periods of time, even though they don't
sound like it in the rest of the world. You know,
ninety seconds at a time radar going down. One of
them happened in the middle of the night, not much impact.
One happened in the middle of the day, and quite
clearly everybody who is fortunate, Although there are redundancies in
place that nothing went catastrophically wrong. And so these are
(07:32):
things where you know, you've got some of the same
equipment that exists in other places, but for whatever reason
it failed in Newark and in a very scary way.
That has now caused the government to say, look, we
just we just can't have as many flights there as
we've had. We need to build in more margin for error.
And so, through a combination of airlines kind of voluntarily
(07:54):
reducing their own flights and directives, now we have a
far fewer flights at Newark than we had previously. In
a world we're generally speaking, more people are flying than
I've ever flown before.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Just to make it comparison to what we do every
week on the middle you know, we have my We
have a com rex. It's like a device that allows
the signal to transmit from where I am to our
studio in Illinois, and then they have two comrexes to
go to Washington, DC to get it up to the
satellite for distribution, just in case one of them goes down.
(08:27):
You know, we have lost our entire phone system at
times it just drops all of a sudden, and then
it comes back but that's not putting anybody's life at risk.
It's just kind of surprising to me that there's not
more redundancy already built in than this where that could
even be an issue when the radar goes down, you.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Think, okay, we just go to the backup.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Now, exactly. And that's the idea of redundance, these backups
and backups to backups. And with the crash at Reagan,
I think a lot of us, including those of us
who feel like we know a fair amount about this industry,
were surprised at some of the things that were not
previously understood about sort of how little margin for error
(09:06):
was built in that perhaps at black Hawk was seventy
five feet or so higher than it should have been,
but the idea that it was even a matter of
just seventy five feet that could have caused a catastrophic
crash like that surprised a lot of people. And in fact,
those things have changed already there And so yes, the
redundancies are there, but as you said, Jeremy, whether they're
(09:27):
there to the extent that they should be for something
that can kill people as opposed to comrex in your studio,
that's very much under the microscope right now.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
There was also a plane crash in San Diego last month.
Six people died, and some of the issues that the
NTSP has pointed to were malfunctioning runway lights and a
broken weather alert system. So when we hear that in
the context of everything else that's going on, it sounds
like there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be updated.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
No question. And we saw again sort of the for
lack of a better way of saying, the kind of
the Marquee crash that really shook everybody was at American Airlines,
because that's that's a flight eddy of us feel like
we could have been on right. But there have been
there have been others as well, and I should say
this too again sort of going back to like like
you know what causes, you know what's new and what's not.
We do have this heightened sensitivity now to anything that happens,
(10:15):
understandably so because of what happened back in late January
at Reagan Airport, and so you know, crashes like the
one in San Diego that's not entirely unique. You know,
there have been other times when when again for lack
of a better word, lack of a more sensitive way
of saying it. You know that those smaller numbers of
people have died in a plane crash that's not a
commercial airline crash that causes headlines throughout the country and
(10:38):
where we don't necessarily collectively pay as much attention to it.
So part of it now is that we are paying
attention more to things that rightfully so, by the way,
but that we weren't paying attention to in the fast
So that's entirely knew what happened in San Diego, but
but absolutely it highlights the issue well.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And by the way, there have actually been we are
paying a lot of attention, but there have actually been
fewer crashes this year overall by this point than there
were last year, which is interesting.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Right And so you know, and people have asked me,
for example, you know, what's the safest airline those kinds
of things you can imagine people in my life, and
I say, you know, that's a hard question to answer
for a relatively good reason, which is that things like
what happened in January have become so rare that we
don't really have a sample size to be able to
(11:28):
make that kind of that kind of analysis. Right back
in the nineteen nineties as recently as that, which is
all that long ago. You know, you'd have a few
fatal plane crashes a year in America, right and you
could say, back then you could look at it and say, oh, yeah,
USAir has had you know, a few plane Charlotte and Pittsburgh,
you know, are they more dangerous than Delta? You know?
And reasonable people could disagree about the answer to that,
(11:48):
But there was a sample size, whereas now it just
is so rare. And as you said, we had that
one awful crash. But overall, yes, the system is is
still by in terms of most ways that we can measure,
about as safe as it's ever been, which is not
to say it's what it should be.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
What about the controllers who are on the job set,
they've been complaining that they're overworked and overstressed. What do
we know about that and has that changed with Trump
coming in or is it pretty much something that just
existed long before.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Well, there's no question that exist died before. These are
not these are not new complaints, And and and one
thing you always have to kind of look at with
with with any kind of management labor relations candidly is
is you have to try to separate out, uh, you know,
very legitimate complaints, and these are folks who obviously have
those from On the other hand, sometimes those legitimate complaints
(12:42):
can also be used to advance other other agendas.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Right, get paid more or something like that, get.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Get paid more exactly. So so these so these are
these are unionized workers who have a very hard job,
and they they deserve everything, everything they get and uh,
you know clearly things are not are not okay for them.
But but but we just have to recognize that's an
important part of the analysis. Is that is that you know,
every group of worker is going to say if you
don't they understand that you want to make an argument
that that's going to resonate with somebody else. You don't
(13:09):
want to say you should do this because it's what
I want. They're smart enough to say you should do
this because it's what you should want. And many of
the things that is true. But at the same time,
these are people who are like anybody else, like any
of us, you know, interested in you know, getting paid
as much as we think we're worth and that sort
of thing. So not new complaints, but definitely a new
environment here in terms of the federal government's approach toward
(13:32):
federal workers in general.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Well, and the administration is now offering twenty percent bonuses
for people in the air traffic control world who are
near retirement to get them to stay on the job
and get their salary plus twenty percent.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
You think that's going to make a difference.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Do you think that these Yeah, the attention bonuses and
people that are that are near retirement saying okay, final
work another a couple of years.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Yeah, I mean there are kinds of incentives that that work,
that shows you what a priority this has become. Set
against the backdrop of what's happening with everybody, Well, people
getting paid to leave, and these are people getting paid
extra to stay.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
We'll stay with us because we're going to talk about
solutions in a moment. One Thing Trump did with Airline
Weekly founder Seth Kaplan will be right back. Welcome back
(14:36):
to One Thing Trump did exclusively on the Middle podcast feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. This episode, we're talking about mounting issues
with the country's air traffic control infrastructure and problems for
air travel. I'm joined by journalist Seth Kaplan, founder of
Airline Weekly and a reporter with Nextstar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Seth,
(14:56):
let's talk about one thing that is being reported on
now that they're talking about using AI to help alleviate
the controller gap or to help bolster safety measures for
air traffic control.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
What can you tell us about that?
Speaker 4 (15:07):
AI clearly has done all kinds of things in the
past few years, both good and bad, but but a
lot good that uh, that none of us would have
imagined not too many years ago, and and and yes,
you know, machine learning just just just just uh, you know,
these things that computers we think might be able to
detect patterns and so forth, that that that human brains
(15:29):
and eyes can't detect. The idea is that that that
those same kinds of algorithms could help us figure out,
you know, what really matters more and what doesn't matter
as much in terms of spacing aircraft apart from each other,
those sorts of things, things that are still done rather
manually in a world of so much other automation and
so so the idea here is is can that AI
(15:51):
still rather new technology and that's the part that's also
scary here, right, but but one that's helped in other realms.
Can it help with this in a way that that
number one makes things safer, but also over the long term,
and you know this is an important goal too, just
makes things more efficient because airplanes right now fly and
(16:12):
all kinds of crazy patterns in the sky also because
of those old systems. That's the biggest impact, by the way, Jeremy,
on all of us. Right again, we talked despite it
all the flying is still really safe by any measure
compared to any other time in history, all of that,
but it's really inefficient, right, It's really bad for the
(16:33):
environment compared to what it could be if airplanes could
just fly in straight lines from their origins or destination
rather than going in all kinds of out of the
way patterns because precisely of all this old equipment and
that sort of thing. So ideally automation could help make
things not only safer but more efficient. Get us who
we're going more quickly, burn less fuel.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And they're even talking about using it to have you know,
just one pilot on the plane instead of two. Right now,
I guess we're acquire a co pilot for most flights,
and in this case maybe AI would take the other seat,
which made me a little skeptical at first, but then
I took a waim the other day for the first time,
and I was like, oh, okay, I don't feel so
bad about this. This driver seems pretty good. In fact,
(17:14):
it was a little bit aggressive at times making some
lane changes. So Seth, do you think that there are
people who have actually stopped flying because of all of
this worry in the last few months.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
That goes back to what I said earlier about just
so many new things variables that are hard to control
that it's hard to measure, right if only that had happened,
but we weren't. Also, Oh, by the way, in a
trade war that has people in some cases actually suffering economically,
in other cases avoiding certain kinds of travel to the
United States, for example, from other countries that would be
(17:48):
easier to measure in the real world. All of that
is happening. But I can say, Jeremy that airlines did say,
even before things got to quite where they are right now,
that there was some kind of not huge, huge, but
measurable impact on consumer travel demand in the wake of
the airline crash. So I think it's fair to say
there's a non zero number of people. There's somebody not
(18:10):
flying today who would have flown perhaps if not for that,
even if that's probably not the biggest force right now
in the wake of everything else I described, And even if,
by the way, that might not be a wise choice
by that person, depending on what else they're doing instead
of flying. I tell people in my own life that
all the time they say, well should I fly? I say, well,
what's your alternative? Are you going to stay home the
(18:31):
rest of your life? Because well, okay, I guess that
would be safer, wouldn't be terribly interesting. But if if
you're saying, should I fly instead of driving?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
We know this not that well.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
And even if a small percentage of people have decided
that they're not flying, imagine the airlines are not happy
about that. What kind of leverage do they have with
regards to the air traffic control system? Are they knocking
down on the door of Sean Duffy's saying you better
figure this out? Are they do they have to pay
for some of the upgrades? Like how do the airlines
fit in to this?
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Well, that's long been a big part of this, right
is It's been this kind of chicken and egg issue
of over the decades. This goes back way before the
current administration, way before the last administration, but the government
sort of saying, okay, airlines, you need to pay for
some of this. You need to put certain kinds of
avionics on your aircraft, for example, so that the new stuff,
you know, actually does what it's supposed to do. And
(19:20):
airlines basically saying, well, you know, why should we invest
this money if it's taking forever to put the infrastructure
in place that needs to be there for the new
stuff on the airplanes to work. So they're a very
big part of the process. And certain airlines, Delta notably
over the years, is one that's that's sort of argued, hey,
we can't just you know, throw our hands up and
say this is this is somebody else's problem. We need
(19:41):
to be active about this. I mentioned them, but they're
certainly certainly not the other the only ones United and
others active in that regard. So they're a big part
of the process.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
So you know, this show is called one Thing Trump Did.
The Trump administration is blaming the Biden administration for the
situation with air traffic control and vice versa to some degree.
What do we know about what's true? Is there blame
to be assigned to one administration or the other for
(20:10):
this problem that we're facing right now.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Well, in this industry, you could also probably blame the
Ford administration, right, or the administration for some of the
things that are wrong. So so to try to sign
cause it effect. And that is something we tend to see,
maybe from this president more than even others, is the
you know, whatever, whatever bad happens must be the previous administration,
whatever good happens, must be something that was caused sometime
(20:33):
after January twentieth and and the reality is, this is
the situation that's been building up over a long time.
On one hand, all kinds of problems. On the other hand, again,
you know, you add it all up, and flying is
still really really safe, safer than it than it used
to be, thanks largely by the way to automation, right,
and so so we have to be careful about that too.
(20:54):
Is when people say, as you said, with weimo right,
scary but right, so with this too, the idea of
not having two pilots in a cockpit, yeah, that scares me.
On the other hand, other kinds of automation have helped
get us to this rather safe environment that we're right now,
all right.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I want to ask you one more thing, Seth. And
it's sort of unrelated to this, but we kind of
got into it a moment ago, which is airline butts
in seats. They say, like, how many people are flying
on these planes? We are hearing that foreign tourism is
way down because of the tariffs, certainly from Canada, also
from Europe. People just not happy with Trump. They don't
(21:31):
want to come to the United States. They're worried that,
you know, there's going to be some problem with immigration
when they get here. How is that affecting the airlines
right now?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Well, right now when you try to net it all out,
and when I say all, I'm including cheaper fuel, which
might oil is cheaper, probably partly because of all the
instability in the world right now, right but we have
to offset all those challenges with that. Airlines are paying
a lot less for this, this really important thing that
(22:01):
they buy. So they are still doing rather well right now.
And because feel is so much cheaper. I can't even
sit here and say that they're doing any worse bottom
line than they might have been doing if not for
all of this. But if we're just talking about travel,
demand revenue, no question that it adds up to something meaningful,
albeit not devastating. We do see airlines making small trims
(22:23):
in their schedules, especially late summer that part of the
year when in America, especially schools kind of in the
South and the West, go back early in August. In
airlines that maybe we're a little more ambitious about what
they thought they could get in terms of butts and
seats late in the summer, dialing it down a little bit,
but only in small ways right now, because also, Jeremy,
this is an industry that's still kind of recovering from
(22:45):
a shortage of aircraft that it had for so long.
And so that's part of it too, is that they
were a growth mode for all kinds of reasons, including
that they were just kind of playing catch up from
their perspective.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, interesting that the cost of oil matters more to
them in some ways than the amount of people who
want to fly on their planes, or at.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Least as much. Yeah, and and and and the the
precise answer, and that's a whole other show, is you know,
different airlines maybe care more about one than the other.
Right there, Airlines who who really depend on on premium revenue.
It's all about you know, how many people are flying
business class across the Atlantic. There are other people who
it's it's uh, other airlines that carry rather price sensitive
travelers from the Midwest to I don't know, put to
(23:28):
gord to Florida and places like that, and and who
who maybe don't usually charge all that much anyway, and
and if they can save on fuel, uh, then then
then that's a big deal. But to one extent or another, Yeah,
it's it's all. The bottom line is literally that it's
it's it's revenues minus costs. And and what matters most
of all is uh is where they end up there,
(23:49):
not how they get there.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That is Seid Kaplan, who is founder of Airline Weekly
and a reporter with Nextar in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Seth thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Thank you, Jeremy, and thanks to you for listening to
One Thing Trump Did. It was produced by Harrison Patino.
Our next middle episode will be in your podcast feed
later this week. We're going to be talking about the
role that Christianity plays in our politics. It is an
encore episode from last year, but it's so good we're
playing it again. It's actually our most downloaded podcast episode ever,
and I will be not able to do a live
(24:19):
show because I am on a bike ride from San
Francisco to Los Angeles for AIDS life Cycle and you
can learn more about that at listen tooth middle dot com.
If you like this podcast, please rate it wherever you
get your podcasts and write a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Talk to you soon.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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