January 30, 2025 • 32 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (01/30) - Perry Russom comes on the show with the latest on the airline crash in Washington DC. More on the airline crash in DC where an American Airlines plane and an Army Blackhawk helicopter crashed into each other. Don Mihalek comes on the show to talk about the search and rescue recovery process taking place after the airline crash in Washington DC. More on the airline crash in DC.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 3 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
No Wall, no lull, and the tragedy is going on
in the world. We are on from one until four
o'clock as always, and then after four o'clock if you
mentioned anything John Cobelt Show on demand, that's the podcast
version on the iHeart app. And we are going to
continue covering the plane crash into the Potomac River in Washington,
(00:28):
d C. Between a jet sixty four people aboard and
then three members of the army in a black Hawk helicopter.
The collision was over the Potomac River. I'm sure you've
heard so much of the detail already. We have the
latest coming from Perry Russom. He's an ABC News correspondent
(00:49):
in Washington, and he's going to tell us what's been
going on most recently. Perry, how are you.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I'm doing well? How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm all right? What's the latest?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Yeah, So the NTSP had a news conference a short
time ago where they're not going to speculate them what
caused the crash, but they say they really just don't
have enough information just yet. But the headline's coming out
of that news conference. They do not have the flight
data recorders just yet. They're still in the water. Overnight,
the SAA gave them a packet of information from air
traffic control and then we're expecting a preliminary report within
(01:21):
thirty days from the NTSB and then a full report
basically when they are done. This is the NTSB's first
full day on the scene. They have about fifty people
from the organization at the airport. They're going to be
looking at the humans involved, the machines involved, and the environments.
They're going to be looking at impact angles, altitude, the engines,
looking at air traffic control systems including radar and communication systems,
(01:43):
so basically a full diagnostics on both aircraft and ultimately
this is their goal. They say they want to understand
why it happened and then recommend change is to prevent
it from happening again. Now, one of the big issues
down there last night and then today is recovering all
of the bodies. Dive teams are done for the day.
They have about forty bodies recovered, so they're still missing
(02:04):
about twenty seven. They have to wait to extract everybody
until the wreckage is brought to the surface of the water.
It's just too complicated right now, given where the wreckage is,
where we understand that it's upside down in some capacity.
So they just want to make sure that they keep
the rescue team safe because remember they're dealing with jagged
steel and metal, and they want to make sure that
(02:26):
they keep the recovery team safe as well.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And I guess they're confident that all the bodies are
contained inside the aircrafts and that there's no bodies that
got loose and it might be floating down the Potomac.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Now I'm trying to be careful in how I say this.
Some of the reports that we're hearing, it's pretty pretty
gruesome reports from the scene in terms of what was
washing up where. We know that this was a very
large wreckage scene. It's the Potomac River, it's the river moves.
It was one of the questions I had at the
news conference today down at DCA, is how large of
(03:04):
a situation are we looking at now? This plane broke
up into three different parts and some of it was
floating down the river, so that they had to make
sure that they had everybody accounted for. But we understand
now about forty people, like I mentioned, have been recovered,
still missing twenty seven. But they believe the missing twenty
seven are inside that aircraft.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
So they're gonna have to lift up the wreckage. They're
going to have to have some kind of some kind
of a toe right to pull it up into the
air and then drag it to the shore correct.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And something that's interesting about this crash too, So it crashed,
so they collided in mid air, the Blackhawk helicopter and
then the American Airlines flight and then they collided into
the Potomac. But something that's different about this is that
where it happened, it's very shallow. We're told it's about
waste deep, so that there was that double impact of
(03:56):
hitting the ground essentially underwater, hitting the bottom of the river.
So there was that double impact. And you know very
quickly this morning that they did tell us that that
there nobody survived.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, what's the what's the weather been like? I mean,
I mean last night it was so cold. I heard
there were still that. I mean, it's been been extremely
cold for several weeks. And the river, I guess it
started to freeze to some extent. There were chunks of
ice still in the water.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
It's been very cold. I mean I walked to work
every day and it's been so cold that I just
it's been too cold for me to even walk to work.
I was when I was driving back from DCA about
a couple hours ago. There's still parts of the river
that are frozen, so there is a little bit of
a window time today. That's why divers are in the
water today for recovery efforts. The weather was relatively nice.
(04:47):
The issue last night, I mean, it was so windy,
was so cold, it was so dark, there was no
moon in the sky. That was not helping efforts at all.
So basically they had helicopters above the potement that were
flashing their spotlights to try and get a better idea
of where the aircraft was. We're expecting rain overnight, which
will complicate recovery efforts, so this was kind of their
window to try and get everything done before they had
(05:09):
to do with any hiccups of the weather changing.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
All right, Perry, thanks for coming on and giving us
so that latest information. Perry Russell, ABC News correspondent, thanks
for joining us, all right. That I don't know if
you've seen a map, but the plane was so close
to landing. It was headed for a runway that sticks
(05:35):
right up to the edge of the Potomac River on
the west side, and the jet had coming up, had
been coming up from the south, and then had to
make a hard left turn, and it was just about
over the right edge the right bank of the Potomac River,
and it had to make it to the left bank
(05:55):
of the Potomac River, and the river is not that wide,
was just seconds away from touching down. What I heard
is about one hundred and forty miles an hour, and
that's when the helicopter crashed into it. It was the
helicopter was going north to south and the plane was
(06:18):
going from east to west trying to get across the
river final few hundred feet until it would land safely.
It was the one of the all time flukes, the
worst timing imaginable, and clearly the helicopter was not at
the proper altitude the plane was because it was in
(06:39):
its final seconds before it was going to land. That's
exactly how high the plane had to be in order
to make it to the other side of the river
and land, and that helicopter inexplicably was in the way
at that moment.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
You know what I kept thinking when I was watching
this last night. We've all been on planes and when
we land or we're so close to landing, we're kind
of relieved, we're just right. And here they were just
about to land so close.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
It's just heartbreaking. And we will, we'll obviously, we've got
a lot to talk about here. And in about fifteen
minutes or twenty minutes after Debra's one thirty News, we're
going to have Don Mahalakan. He's an ABC News Law
enforcement contributor and a retired Secret Service agent, and he's
also a US Coast Guard Reserve veteran who's had a
(07:26):
lot of major duties that he's had to perform while
he's been with the Coast Guard. He's part of the
he's been part of the Pacific Strike Team. He is
going to explain the logistics of what the Coastguard and
these other agencies have to do, how they have to
work together, and how they recover the bodies, and how
they're going to move the wreckage. It's it's a tremendous
(07:48):
engineering job they have in front of him.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Right now, you're listening.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
To John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
We've got about two minutes of audio to play for
you from the air traffic control tower leading up to
the crash. And according to the timeline, I mean, this
happened so quickly with very little warning. At eight forty
(08:17):
eight and thirty eight seconds last night, the air traffic
control tower radios the Blackhawk helicopter and says, do you
have the CRJ in sight? The CRJ was the model
name of the jet, CRJ seven hundred. That's at eight
forty eight and thirty eight seconds, do you have the
(08:38):
CRJ in sight? Because they could see on radar how
close they were getting, and the helicopter pilot confirms that
he sees the plane and then mentions visual separation, which
is pilots speak for he's going to get out of
the way. He's gonna separate from where the big jet
(09:02):
is going. Remember the big jet is seconds away from
landing across the river. So that's an eight forty eight
thirty eight The tower says, do you have the CRJ
in sight? And eight forty eight fifty six, eighteen seconds.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Later, the collision happens.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
So the helicopter pilot and this is going to be
the focus of the investigation. Whatever he did didn't work
in time. Trump was talking about this at the news
conference this morning and said, these kind of helicopters, you know,
they you could stop them quickly, you can reverse them.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
They could turn right, left, up, down.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
They can they respond quickly, their military black Hawk helicopters. Instead,
the helicopter continued right in the path of the plane,
as if neither the planes pilot or the helicopter pilo
I knew the other was there. Hey, let's play the
audio down from Air Traffic.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Controls Jergy Fay pops Finder Jury. I don't know if
you got earlier what happened, but there was a puision
on the approach in the three three appreciate the three
first two.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I think it's the very sake Saints turf World Wakery
three World Bakery three.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Cistay you do that?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Fortunately? Mean sorry to go around some left in three
fag by mainteen thirte thousand.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Black chack three?
Speaker 5 (10:31):
Can you return to the w black chack three received directly.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
To believe I need your land, I.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Need your land a media. Can you go to day?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Can you go to dollar chirtem?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I got a month one. Three.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I need to have you as for the air say
team you go to Andrews Black tick three, do you
have any kind of like search plate or any anything
on board that would help, say.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Some light at the stop.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
A second, this seems to be after the crash happened,
because they they were saying at the beginning, did you
see that. There's a report in the New York Times,
and I'm just scrolling to find it that this collision
(11:14):
signals multiple failures. One of them may have been the
staffing at the airport tower. According to a preliminary FAA report,
staffing at the air traffic control tower was not normal
for the time of day and volume of traffic. That's
a quote. That's an FAA safety report that the New
York Times got a hold of.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Now listen to this.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport's vicinity
was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from
its runways. So you got that he has two jobs
he's doing. There's supposed to be two people on these
two jobs. One is handling the helicopters, the other instructing
(11:57):
the planes that were arriving at depart arding. Those jobs
are typically assigned to two controllers rather than one.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Could you.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I mean, it's always boggled my mind how they keep
track of all the planes coming in at a major
airport like lax, planes are flying in every few seconds.
You ever look at one of those flight aware apps
on your phone or on a computer, and there's so
many planes swirling in the air, dozens of them over
(12:30):
at every major at metropolitan airport, and air traffic control
has to track all of them at the same time. Now,
this staffer also had to track the helicopters and going
up and down the Potomac River because there's so many
military bases nearby.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
There's so much military helicopter traffic. That's its own job.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
That's a very common popular corridor for military helicopters, just
to go up and down north to south over the
Potomac River. The time says this increases the workload for
the air traffic controller and can complicate the job no kidding.
One of the reasons is that the air controllers use
(13:11):
different radio frequencies to communicate with the pilots filent flying
the planes and a different one for the pilots flying
the helicopters.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
So you're managing the helicopters.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
That are whizzing by, you're guiding the jets that are
landing and leaving, and you've got to do this all
by switching radio frequencies.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And there's one guy on all this. This is nuts.
This is completely nuts.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
And as I'm reading it, says staffing has been cut
over the years, budgets have been cut. Oh gee, where
did we hear this story before, just three weeks ago
about the Los Angeles Fire Department, How we haven't had
any meaningful increase in firefighters and fire stations and engines
(14:07):
in sixty years. Well, it looks like something similar is
going on with the air traffic controllers at the airports.
And you know what they've done at Ronald Reagan Airport.
Ronald Reagan Airport is the smaller of the two airports,
and it's located right in the city. You cross the
Potomac River and now you're into the government. You're the
(14:30):
White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, all that, whereas Dulles,
the larger airport, is thirty miles away. And what they've
done is that they've crammed more and more and more
flights into Reagan because the Congress. People want flights available
seven days a week, whatever they feel like going home
(14:52):
or going on, whatever their junkets are. So they've constantly passed,
you know, regulations increasing the number of planes that go
in and out of Reagan Airport, but they have not
increased the budget, nor have they updated the technology to
(15:12):
handle all that extra traffic. Now, to have one guy
handling all the helicopters and all the planes going in
and out is insane. But it looks like it's a nationwide,
a nationwide failure not keeping the infrastructure up, either locally
(15:35):
or nationally. It says like most of the country's air
traffic control facilities, the tower has been understaffed for years.
The tower was a third below targeted staff levels. It
had nineteen as of about a year ago. The target
was thirty. So controllers have to work six days a week,
(15:58):
ten hours a day, constant employee turnover, and tight budgets.
And yet how much money do we spend on the
illegal aliens? How much money do we spend on illegal
alien criminals? We don't spend it in the air traffic
controllers and their technology. We'll continue with more coming up.
We're going to talk with Don Mahallick, and he's with
(16:19):
ABC News and he's going to explain the magnitude of
the recovery effort here, the wreckage and the collection of
the bodies out of the Potomac River.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Don Mahallick coming up next.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
You're listening to John Cobel's on Demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobolt Show on demand, the podcast
for whatever you miss We continue covering this airline crash
in Washington, d C. We're going to continue out with
Don Mahollick, ABC News Law Enforcement contributor. He's a retired
Secret Service agent and Don is also a US Coast
(17:00):
Guard Reserve veteran who was assigned as an operations watch
officer for the Pacific Strike Team and other major posts
that he has served under. So he's got some information
here about how the cleanup works done.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Thanks for having me, John. I hope you guys are
holding up well with all the fires. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I know things are just starting to stabilize here, but
we got a very very long recovery effort that's going
to go on for years. Telly, what do you know
about what it's going to take to deal with the
recovery of this plane crash here, the search for the
bodies and everything connected to this tragedy.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, it's a very sad, sad situation. Anytime you have
an air crash over the water, it makes the rescue
operation very difficult. We saw that when JFK Junior crashed
in the Long Island Sound several years ago. How difficult
that rescue operation is. So could you have wind, tides, currents,
and temperature are working against you, especially in the winter
(18:02):
time and the Northeast here is just coming off of
an extreme cold spell where the water of the Potomac
River is extremely cold, which makes the recovery efforts that
much more complicated. It sounds like they have recovered thirty
nine people so far, but they're still going to work
to recover more. For the Coast Guard and its partners
(18:25):
that have to do a recovery effort that is magnitude
two aircraft the middle of the Potomac River near a
major airport, it's a full blown rescue recovery operation. At
the Coast Guard gets test as the on site cordinate
or four and they bring in all of their resources,
small boats, they bring in cutters. I think there's four
(18:45):
Coast Guard cutters that are probably there now, have air
units onseen. They also activated the Atlantic Strike Team, which
is a pollution response experts and a Coast Guard who
are going to try to handle the three thousand gallons
plus of fuel jet fuel that have now contaminated the
Potomac River. So this is a full blown evolution. You
(19:09):
have to take care of the families as well, which
the Coast Guard is probably relying on their local stakeholders
to do. They have to set up a family Assistance center.
They have to set up a you know, an evidence
recovery center which the FBI with the NTSB will help
put together the aircraft to figure out what went on.
(19:30):
And they have to also keep the airport operating and
keep the Potomac River safe. So it's a it's a
pretty tremendous operation the undertaking right now. And so the
Coast Guard, you know, this is their bread and butter.
They do search and rescue and this which is why
they are the prime coordinators for this type of a
(19:50):
maritime rescue.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
The whole thing just seems overwhelming as you went through
all the all the things that have to be addressed here.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
The bodies themselves, many of them are belt it into
the seats, trapped inside the fuselage underwater thirty seven degree water.
I heard there's chunks of ice, chunks of ice still
floating in the Potomac. How do the rescue workers get
to the bodies and get them out.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
That's tremendous gritten courage on a part of the first
responder divers from fire departments, police departments, military that are
there working having to dive that area of the Potomac River.
And of course the issue for them is you're talking
about temperature currents and also the debris fields shifting that
(20:44):
they have to be aware of, and that part and
the Potomac River is not known as a great place
to dive, so they're doing so in pretty low light conditions.
So a lot of it is by hand or with
artificial lighting as far as they can, and a lot
of is just trying to figure out and project and
I'm sure they'll bring in some technologies to bear to
(21:05):
try to pinpoint because it is such a large debris
field and it's metal to try to pinpoint where at
least the outlines of the major pieces of debris are,
so they can zero in on those areas, get down
to wherever the people could potentially be, and try to
and try to recover them for their families.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
This will take how long just to recover the bodies
most likely how many days? I know you said they
got thirty dolls already, which seems amazingly fast.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, I hate to gesture a guess, because it's amazing
when people put their minds to do something and the
resources there, how quickly things can unfold. But I'm sure
it'll take a few days for them to finish the
recovery effort as far as getting the people out, identifying
(21:58):
the people, reuniting them with their family these letting folks know,
So that'll be a several day process because that also
has to have a corner look at the people and
make sure they're positively identifying the right people, and in
addition to that, getting the debris out of the water, which,
depending on exactly where it is in the Potomac, the
(22:18):
water depth is working against them as well, so they're
going to have to search fine and then recovery of
the debris, which which necessitates bringing in large barges to
put the debris on and to move the debris out
of the water onto the land someplace. So it's a
pretty complex operation. The recovery piece of the bodies will
probably be a few days, I'm sure the evidence piece
(22:39):
of it will be a week or so. So that
way they can piece this all together and figure out
figure out what happened, then give an explanation first and
foremost of the families impacted, and then of course that
there rested a nation and.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
They've gone through training for exactly this sort of thing,
or or to what extent do they have to make
it up as they go along? I mean, have they
gone through Sidney related rescues in real icy water with
with the you know, plane wreckage, old planes maybe that
they dumped in the water, and then say okay, let's
have at it here, learn, you know, learn right now
(23:12):
with the real stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah. John, that's the beauty of d C because it's
it's you know, it's a major metropolitan area where the
agencies are very used to working together and cooperating together,
and you're bringing resources from a multitude of agencies, from
Virginia's agencies, from d C, federal agencies, the DoD Maryland.
You've got this wealth of experience and expertise that are
(23:36):
merging at that location right now. So you're going to
have people that maybe have been involved with recoveries of aircraft,
maybe not the size, but maybe recoveries of aircraft, the
people that have never done it before. But that's why
the coast Guard is the primary coordinator who will merge
all these assets under an incident command structure is a
great way to go about any type of an emergency
(23:57):
like this because it brings that expertise, it brings us
the resources together, and it really maximizes the effectiveness of
the rescue and recovery operation. And of course the divers
all go through extensive training. For the first responders, they
train extensively to search for to search for things that
end up in the water. That's part and parcel with
becoming a rescue diver. So in reality, if it had
(24:20):
to happen anywhere, DC is probably one of the better
places for a situation aside to have occurred.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Thank you for coming on Don and explaining all that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Thanks for having me John. I hope you guys hold
up there in LA and recover quick.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, we're going to keep grinding ahead.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Don mahonlak ABC News lawenforcement contributor, retired Secret Service agent
and also a US Coast Guard Reserve veteran who has
been the operation's watch officer for a major report in
the Pacific Strike Team and many other high level duties
over the years. We will continue covering this air crash
in the Potomac River in Washington, DC that happened last night.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
Listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Coming up at two o'clock, We're going to talk with Emma.
Let me get her name correct, Emma James. She writes
for the Daily Mail, and she was in a plane
that landed at the Reagan Airport in Washington, d C.
Just a few minutes before this crash, and she was
(25:26):
she was at the airport. She had a bumpy landing
coming from Kansas City. There were high winds in the area,
and she was there when suddenly the whole atmosphere at
Reagan Airport changed dramatically, and she's going to describe to
us what it was like. That is coming up right
after Debra's newscast at two o'clock. Also next hour, we
(25:47):
are gonna because because Trump today had a press conferences,
He's had several. He now appears on television I don't know,
three four, five times a day, and he overwhelms each
appearance with so many either executive orders or newsworthy announcements
or just crazy stuff that nobody can keep track of
(26:09):
all this. And he had the press this morning running
around in circles because after going through the obvious things
that you say after its terrable, deadly plane crash, and
about the investigations that are going to happen, and you know,
condoldolences to the family, he then blamed d and I.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
DEI up and down for the crash.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
And when they asked him, well, what's the evidence, they said, well,
common sense. And he's repeatedly blasted the Biden administration, the
old Transportation Secretary of Pete Buddhacheg.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And the thing is he was right about the FAA's
DEI policies.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Now I don't know if that has anything to do
with this particular crash, but when I read you the policies,
because there has been a lawsuit against them, so this
is all part of the public record, you are not
going to believe who the FAA has been rejecting as employees,
as air traffic controllers and who they've been trying to recruit. Okay,
(27:11):
you're gonna fall out of your chair. Thing the progressive world,
the progressives have made the world so nuts, so dangerous,
so ridiculous. We'll tell you about it all this coming
up after two o'clock, but first, you know, we're going
to talk with Emma James. Now, when you have these situations,
(27:32):
people do naturally start panicking. But the National Review published
something today, and it's worth repeating. There has not been
a fatal commercial aviation accident in the US in nearly
sixteen years. It's two thousand and nine. Happened outside of
Buffalo Cogan Air. If you remember that they had this
icing problem on the wings. Do you know how many
(27:57):
flights there are every year? Since two thousand and nine,
sixteen million flights. Eight hundred million passengers fly every year
on more than sixteen million flights that spent about twenty
five million hours in the air. Those numbers are so
(28:17):
big the human brain can't comprehend them. A conservative estimate
says since the last crash in two thousand and nine,
more than ten billion passengers have flown in the US
on one hundred and fifty million flights that spent more
than two hundred and twenty five million hours in the air,
(28:38):
and nothing bad happened.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
The death toll.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
For commercial aviation in the US since two thousand and
nine is sixty seven. The death toll from wasps over
the same period as over one thousand. And I'm definitely
a thousand times more frightened of wasps than I am
a flying.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And I guess because it's so safe, it's almost too safe,
that the.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Federal government has decided to ignore air traffic control and
not take it seriously anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
And that's why those poor guys are way overworked.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
They're doing ten hours a day, six days a week,
and they have to do several jobs at once.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Like whoever was given the job.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Last night at Reagan Airport had to handle the helicopters
going down from down the Potomac, but he also had
to handle all the planes that were arriving and landing.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
One guy handling that, as I said, two different radio frequencies.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
And it's because flight has been so safe, there has
been no national Well I don't understand why they're going
to just keep up basic the basic maintenance, the minimum
staffing required. It's exactly the same thing, like what happened
to the fire department here in Los Angeles over the
last sixty years, and why they were so terribly understaffed
(30:01):
for the for the Palisades fire. How come no one
in government staffs things like police, fire, air traffic controllers.
And think of all the money that goes for all
the garbage and nonsense, starting with the illegal.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I mean I saw today, I saw today. They knows
them not to be stopped.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
He's still trying to get a twenty five million dollar
package passed in the legislature to help out illegal aliens.
Give them lawyers. We have to pay for illegal aliens
legal representation so they could continue breaking the law and
stay in the country. That's what Newsom wants to spend
the money on. And he cut the state fire budget
(30:43):
last year. When when in God's name is he going
to be removed? And when is this whole progressive, idiot,
absurd philosophy going to be finally destroyed.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Because they're going to us.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I guess the shame of what happened in the Palisades
with that terrible, terrible uh, I wouldn't even call it
an effort.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
They were completely unprepared. The state was unprepared and so
is the city.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
And then a couple of months later, instead of announcing
funding maybe for the LA Fire Department, since we only
have half a fire department, he's not providing the other
half of the funding. He's going to give Illgal Aliens
millions of dollars, twenty five million dollars, which is.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Going to go to lawyers. Just outrageous, unbelievably outrageous.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
We are stupid society if we allow the likes of
Newsome and Karen Bass to continue in power. Incredibly stupid society.
When we come back after two o'clock, Devera's is going
to do the news that We're going to Emma James
the from a Daily mail and she landed at Reagan
Airport last night just minutes before the plane crash and
she was in one of the terminals.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
We're going to talk to her about it. Next.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Debor Mark live in the KFI twenty for our newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI Am six
forty from one to four pm every Monday, through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Can't.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 3 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
No Wall, no lull, and the tragedy is going on
in the world. We are on from one until four
o'clock as always, and then after four o'clock if you
mentioned anything John Cobelt Show on demand, that's the podcast
version on the iHeart app. And we are going to
continue covering the plane crash into the Potomac River in Washington,
(00:28):
d C. Between a jet sixty four people aboard and
then three members of the army in a black Hawk helicopter.
The collision was over the Potomac River. I'm sure you've
heard so much of the detail already. We have the
latest coming from Perry Russom. He's an ABC News correspondent
(00:49):
in Washington, and he's going to tell us what's been
going on most recently. Perry, how are you.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I'm doing well? How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I'm all right? What's the latest?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Yeah, So the NTSP had a news conference a short
time ago where they're not going to speculate them what
caused the crash, but they say they really just don't
have enough information just yet. But the headline's coming out
of that news conference. They do not have the flight
data recorders just yet. They're still in the water. Overnight,
the SAA gave them a packet of information from air
traffic control and then we're expecting a preliminary report within
(01:21):
thirty days from the NTSB and then a full report
basically when they are done. This is the NTSB's first
full day on the scene. They have about fifty people
from the organization at the airport. They're going to be
looking at the humans involved, the machines involved, and the environments.
They're going to be looking at impact angles, altitude, the engines,
looking at air traffic control systems including radar and communication systems,
(01:43):
so basically a full diagnostics on both aircraft and ultimately
this is their goal. They say they want to understand
why it happened and then recommend change is to prevent
it from happening again. Now, one of the big issues
down there last night and then today is recovering all
of the bodies. Dive teams are done for the day.
They have about forty bodies recovered, so they're still missing
(02:04):
about twenty seven. They have to wait to extract everybody
until the wreckage is brought to the surface of the water.
It's just too complicated right now, given where the wreckage is,
where we understand that it's upside down in some capacity.
So they just want to make sure that they keep
the rescue team safe because remember they're dealing with jagged
steel and metal, and they want to make sure that
(02:26):
they keep the recovery team safe as well.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And I guess they're confident that all the bodies are
contained inside the aircrafts and that there's no bodies that
got loose and it might be floating down the Potomac.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Now I'm trying to be careful in how I say this.
Some of the reports that we're hearing, it's pretty pretty
gruesome reports from the scene in terms of what was
washing up where. We know that this was a very
large wreckage scene. It's the Potomac River, it's the river moves.
It was one of the questions I had at the
news conference today down at DCA, is how large of
(03:04):
a situation are we looking at now? This plane broke
up into three different parts and some of it was
floating down the river, so that they had to make
sure that they had everybody accounted for. But we understand
now about forty people, like I mentioned, have been recovered,
still missing twenty seven. But they believe the missing twenty
seven are inside that aircraft.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
So they're gonna have to lift up the wreckage. They're
going to have to have some kind of some kind
of a toe right to pull it up into the
air and then drag it to the shore correct.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And something that's interesting about this crash too, So it crashed,
so they collided in mid air, the Blackhawk helicopter and
then the American Airlines flight and then they collided into
the Potomac. But something that's different about this is that
where it happened, it's very shallow. We're told it's about
waste deep, so that there was that double impact of
(03:56):
hitting the ground essentially underwater, hitting the bottom of the river.
So there was that double impact. And you know very
quickly this morning that they did tell us that that
there nobody survived.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, what's the what's the weather been like? I mean,
I mean last night it was so cold. I heard
there were still that. I mean, it's been been extremely
cold for several weeks. And the river, I guess it
started to freeze to some extent. There were chunks of
ice still in the water.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
It's been very cold. I mean I walked to work
every day and it's been so cold that I just
it's been too cold for me to even walk to work.
I was when I was driving back from DCA about
a couple hours ago. There's still parts of the river
that are frozen, so there is a little bit of
a window time today. That's why divers are in the
water today for recovery efforts. The weather was relatively nice.
(04:47):
The issue last night, I mean, it was so windy,
was so cold, it was so dark, there was no
moon in the sky. That was not helping efforts at all.
So basically they had helicopters above the potement that were
flashing their spotlights to try and get a better idea
of where the aircraft was. We're expecting rain overnight, which
will complicate recovery efforts, so this was kind of their
window to try and get everything done before they had
(05:09):
to do with any hiccups of the weather changing.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
All right, Perry, thanks for coming on and giving us
so that latest information. Perry Russell, ABC News correspondent, thanks
for joining us, all right. That I don't know if
you've seen a map, but the plane was so close
to landing. It was headed for a runway that sticks
(05:35):
right up to the edge of the Potomac River on
the west side, and the jet had coming up, had
been coming up from the south, and then had to
make a hard left turn, and it was just about
over the right edge the right bank of the Potomac River,
and it had to make it to the left bank
(05:55):
of the Potomac River, and the river is not that wide,
was just seconds away from touching down. What I heard
is about one hundred and forty miles an hour, and
that's when the helicopter crashed into it. It was the
helicopter was going north to south and the plane was
(06:18):
going from east to west trying to get across the
river final few hundred feet until it would land safely.
It was the one of the all time flukes, the
worst timing imaginable, and clearly the helicopter was not at
the proper altitude the plane was because it was in
(06:39):
its final seconds before it was going to land. That's
exactly how high the plane had to be in order
to make it to the other side of the river
and land, and that helicopter inexplicably was in the way
at that moment.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
You know what I kept thinking when I was watching
this last night. We've all been on planes and when
we land or we're so close to landing, we're kind
of relieved, we're just right. And here they were just
about to land so close.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
It's just heartbreaking. And we will, we'll obviously, we've got
a lot to talk about here. And in about fifteen
minutes or twenty minutes after Debra's one thirty News, we're
going to have Don Mahalakan. He's an ABC News Law
enforcement contributor and a retired Secret Service agent, and he's
also a US Coast Guard Reserve veteran who's had a
(07:26):
lot of major duties that he's had to perform while
he's been with the Coast Guard. He's part of the
he's been part of the Pacific Strike Team. He is
going to explain the logistics of what the Coastguard and
these other agencies have to do, how they have to
work together, and how they recover the bodies, and how
they're going to move the wreckage. It's it's a tremendous
(07:48):
engineering job they have in front of him.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Right now, you're listening.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
To John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
We've got about two minutes of audio to play for
you from the air traffic control tower leading up to
the crash. And according to the timeline, I mean, this
happened so quickly with very little warning. At eight forty
(08:17):
eight and thirty eight seconds last night, the air traffic
control tower radios the Blackhawk helicopter and says, do you
have the CRJ in sight? The CRJ was the model
name of the jet, CRJ seven hundred. That's at eight
forty eight and thirty eight seconds, do you have the
(08:38):
CRJ in sight? Because they could see on radar how
close they were getting, and the helicopter pilot confirms that
he sees the plane and then mentions visual separation, which
is pilots speak for he's going to get out of
the way. He's gonna separate from where the big jet
(09:02):
is going. Remember the big jet is seconds away from
landing across the river. So that's an eight forty eight
thirty eight The tower says, do you have the CRJ
in sight? And eight forty eight fifty six, eighteen seconds.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Later, the collision happens.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
So the helicopter pilot and this is going to be
the focus of the investigation. Whatever he did didn't work
in time. Trump was talking about this at the news
conference this morning and said, these kind of helicopters, you know,
they you could stop them quickly, you can reverse them.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
They could turn right, left, up, down.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
They can they respond quickly, their military black Hawk helicopters. Instead,
the helicopter continued right in the path of the plane,
as if neither the planes pilot or the helicopter pilo
I knew the other was there. Hey, let's play the
audio down from Air Traffic.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Controls Jergy Fay pops Finder Jury. I don't know if
you got earlier what happened, but there was a puision
on the approach in the three three appreciate the three
first two.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I think it's the very sake Saints turf World Wakery
three World Bakery three.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Cistay you do that?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Fortunately? Mean sorry to go around some left in three
fag by mainteen thirte thousand.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Black chack three?
Speaker 5 (10:31):
Can you return to the w black chack three received directly.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
To believe I need your land, I.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Need your land a media. Can you go to day?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Can you go to dollar chirtem?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I got a month one. Three.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I need to have you as for the air say
team you go to Andrews Black tick three, do you
have any kind of like search plate or any anything
on board that would help, say.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Some light at the stop.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
A second, this seems to be after the crash happened,
because they they were saying at the beginning, did you
see that. There's a report in the New York Times,
and I'm just scrolling to find it that this collision
(11:14):
signals multiple failures. One of them may have been the
staffing at the airport tower. According to a preliminary FAA report,
staffing at the air traffic control tower was not normal
for the time of day and volume of traffic. That's
a quote. That's an FAA safety report that the New
York Times got a hold of.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Now listen to this.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport's vicinity
was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from
its runways. So you got that he has two jobs
he's doing. There's supposed to be two people on these
two jobs. One is handling the helicopters, the other instructing
(11:57):
the planes that were arriving at depart arding. Those jobs
are typically assigned to two controllers rather than one.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Could you.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I mean, it's always boggled my mind how they keep
track of all the planes coming in at a major
airport like lax, planes are flying in every few seconds.
You ever look at one of those flight aware apps
on your phone or on a computer, and there's so
many planes swirling in the air, dozens of them over
(12:30):
at every major at metropolitan airport, and air traffic control
has to track all of them at the same time. Now,
this staffer also had to track the helicopters and going
up and down the Potomac River because there's so many
military bases nearby.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
There's so much military helicopter traffic. That's its own job.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
That's a very common popular corridor for military helicopters, just
to go up and down north to south over the
Potomac River. The time says this increases the workload for
the air traffic controller and can complicate the job no kidding.
One of the reasons is that the air controllers use
(13:11):
different radio frequencies to communicate with the pilots filent flying
the planes and a different one for the pilots flying
the helicopters.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
So you're managing the helicopters.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
That are whizzing by, you're guiding the jets that are
landing and leaving, and you've got to do this all
by switching radio frequencies.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And there's one guy on all this. This is nuts.
This is completely nuts.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
And as I'm reading it, says staffing has been cut
over the years, budgets have been cut. Oh gee, where
did we hear this story before, just three weeks ago
about the Los Angeles Fire Department, How we haven't had
any meaningful increase in firefighters and fire stations and engines
(14:07):
in sixty years. Well, it looks like something similar is
going on with the air traffic controllers at the airports.
And you know what they've done at Ronald Reagan Airport.
Ronald Reagan Airport is the smaller of the two airports,
and it's located right in the city. You cross the
Potomac River and now you're into the government. You're the
(14:30):
White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, all that, whereas Dulles,
the larger airport, is thirty miles away. And what they've
done is that they've crammed more and more and more
flights into Reagan because the Congress. People want flights available
seven days a week, whatever they feel like going home
(14:52):
or going on, whatever their junkets are. So they've constantly passed,
you know, regulations increasing the number of planes that go
in and out of Reagan Airport, but they have not
increased the budget, nor have they updated the technology to
(15:12):
handle all that extra traffic. Now, to have one guy
handling all the helicopters and all the planes going in
and out is insane. But it looks like it's a nationwide,
a nationwide failure not keeping the infrastructure up, either locally
(15:35):
or nationally. It says like most of the country's air
traffic control facilities, the tower has been understaffed for years.
The tower was a third below targeted staff levels. It
had nineteen as of about a year ago. The target
was thirty. So controllers have to work six days a week,
(15:58):
ten hours a day, constant employee turnover, and tight budgets.
And yet how much money do we spend on the
illegal aliens? How much money do we spend on illegal
alien criminals? We don't spend it in the air traffic
controllers and their technology. We'll continue with more coming up.
We're going to talk with Don Mahallick, and he's with
(16:19):
ABC News and he's going to explain the magnitude of
the recovery effort here, the wreckage and the collection of
the bodies out of the Potomac River.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Don Mahallick coming up next.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
You're listening to John Cobel's on Demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobolt Show on demand, the podcast
for whatever you miss We continue covering this airline crash
in Washington, d C. We're going to continue out with
Don Mahollick, ABC News Law Enforcement contributor. He's a retired
Secret Service agent and Don is also a US Coast
(17:00):
Guard Reserve veteran who was assigned as an operations watch
officer for the Pacific Strike Team and other major posts
that he has served under. So he's got some information
here about how the cleanup works done.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Thanks for having me, John. I hope you guys are
holding up well with all the fires. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I know things are just starting to stabilize here, but
we got a very very long recovery effort that's going
to go on for years. Telly, what do you know
about what it's going to take to deal with the
recovery of this plane crash here, the search for the
bodies and everything connected to this tragedy.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, it's a very sad, sad situation. Anytime you have
an air crash over the water, it makes the rescue
operation very difficult. We saw that when JFK Junior crashed
in the Long Island Sound several years ago. How difficult
that rescue operation is. So could you have wind, tides, currents,
and temperature are working against you, especially in the winter
(18:02):
time and the Northeast here is just coming off of
an extreme cold spell where the water of the Potomac
River is extremely cold, which makes the recovery efforts that
much more complicated. It sounds like they have recovered thirty
nine people so far, but they're still going to work
to recover more. For the Coast Guard and its partners
(18:25):
that have to do a recovery effort that is magnitude
two aircraft the middle of the Potomac River near a
major airport, it's a full blown rescue recovery operation. At
the Coast Guard gets test as the on site cordinate
or four and they bring in all of their resources,
small boats, they bring in cutters. I think there's four
(18:45):
Coast Guard cutters that are probably there now, have air
units onseen. They also activated the Atlantic Strike Team, which
is a pollution response experts and a Coast Guard who
are going to try to handle the three thousand gallons
plus of fuel jet fuel that have now contaminated the
Potomac River. So this is a full blown evolution. You
(19:09):
have to take care of the families as well, which
the Coast Guard is probably relying on their local stakeholders
to do. They have to set up a family Assistance center.
They have to set up a you know, an evidence
recovery center which the FBI with the NTSB will help
put together the aircraft to figure out what went on.
(19:30):
And they have to also keep the airport operating and
keep the Potomac River safe. So it's a it's a
pretty tremendous operation the undertaking right now. And so the
Coast Guard, you know, this is their bread and butter.
They do search and rescue and this which is why
they are the prime coordinators for this type of a
(19:50):
maritime rescue.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
The whole thing just seems overwhelming as you went through
all the all the things that have to be addressed here.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
The bodies themselves, many of them are belt it into
the seats, trapped inside the fuselage underwater thirty seven degree water.
I heard there's chunks of ice, chunks of ice still
floating in the Potomac. How do the rescue workers get
to the bodies and get them out.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
That's tremendous gritten courage on a part of the first
responder divers from fire departments, police departments, military that are
there working having to dive that area of the Potomac River.
And of course the issue for them is you're talking
about temperature currents and also the debris fields shifting that
(20:44):
they have to be aware of, and that part and
the Potomac River is not known as a great place
to dive, so they're doing so in pretty low light conditions.
So a lot of it is by hand or with
artificial lighting as far as they can, and a lot
of is just trying to figure out and project and
I'm sure they'll bring in some technologies to bear to
(21:05):
try to pinpoint because it is such a large debris
field and it's metal to try to pinpoint where at
least the outlines of the major pieces of debris are,
so they can zero in on those areas, get down
to wherever the people could potentially be, and try to
and try to recover them for their families.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
This will take how long just to recover the bodies
most likely how many days? I know you said they
got thirty dolls already, which seems amazingly fast.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, I hate to gesture a guess, because it's amazing
when people put their minds to do something and the
resources there, how quickly things can unfold. But I'm sure
it'll take a few days for them to finish the
recovery effort as far as getting the people out, identifying
(21:58):
the people, reuniting them with their family these letting folks know,
So that'll be a several day process because that also
has to have a corner look at the people and
make sure they're positively identifying the right people, and in
addition to that, getting the debris out of the water, which,
depending on exactly where it is in the Potomac, the
(22:18):
water depth is working against them as well, so they're
going to have to search fine and then recovery of
the debris, which which necessitates bringing in large barges to
put the debris on and to move the debris out
of the water onto the land someplace. So it's a
pretty complex operation. The recovery piece of the bodies will
probably be a few days, I'm sure the evidence piece
(22:39):
of it will be a week or so. So that
way they can piece this all together and figure out
figure out what happened, then give an explanation first and
foremost of the families impacted, and then of course that
there rested a nation and.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
They've gone through training for exactly this sort of thing,
or or to what extent do they have to make
it up as they go along? I mean, have they
gone through Sidney related rescues in real icy water with
with the you know, plane wreckage, old planes maybe that
they dumped in the water, and then say okay, let's
have at it here, learn, you know, learn right now
(23:12):
with the real stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah. John, that's the beauty of d C because it's
it's you know, it's a major metropolitan area where the
agencies are very used to working together and cooperating together,
and you're bringing resources from a multitude of agencies, from
Virginia's agencies, from d C, federal agencies, the DoD Maryland.
You've got this wealth of experience and expertise that are
(23:36):
merging at that location right now. So you're going to
have people that maybe have been involved with recoveries of aircraft,
maybe not the size, but maybe recoveries of aircraft, the
people that have never done it before. But that's why
the coast Guard is the primary coordinator who will merge
all these assets under an incident command structure is a
great way to go about any type of an emergency
(23:57):
like this because it brings that expertise, it brings us
the resources together, and it really maximizes the effectiveness of
the rescue and recovery operation. And of course the divers
all go through extensive training. For the first responders, they
train extensively to search for to search for things that
end up in the water. That's part and parcel with
becoming a rescue diver. So in reality, if it had
(24:20):
to happen anywhere, DC is probably one of the better
places for a situation aside to have occurred.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Thank you for coming on Don and explaining all that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Thanks for having me John. I hope you guys hold
up there in LA and recover quick.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, we're going to keep grinding ahead.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Don mahonlak ABC News lawenforcement contributor, retired Secret Service agent
and also a US Coast Guard Reserve veteran who has
been the operation's watch officer for a major report in
the Pacific Strike Team and many other high level duties
over the years. We will continue covering this air crash
in the Potomac River in Washington, DC that happened last night.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
Listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Coming up at two o'clock, We're going to talk with Emma.
Let me get her name correct, Emma James. She writes
for the Daily Mail, and she was in a plane
that landed at the Reagan Airport in Washington, d C.
Just a few minutes before this crash, and she was
(25:26):
she was at the airport. She had a bumpy landing
coming from Kansas City. There were high winds in the area,
and she was there when suddenly the whole atmosphere at
Reagan Airport changed dramatically, and she's going to describe to
us what it was like. That is coming up right
after Debra's newscast at two o'clock. Also next hour, we
(25:47):
are gonna because because Trump today had a press conferences,
He's had several. He now appears on television I don't know,
three four, five times a day, and he overwhelms each
appearance with so many either executive orders or newsworthy announcements
or just crazy stuff that nobody can keep track of
(26:09):
all this. And he had the press this morning running
around in circles because after going through the obvious things
that you say after its terrable, deadly plane crash, and
about the investigations that are going to happen, and you know,
condoldolences to the family, he then blamed d and I.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
DEI up and down for the crash.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
And when they asked him, well, what's the evidence, they said, well,
common sense. And he's repeatedly blasted the Biden administration, the
old Transportation Secretary of Pete Buddhacheg.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And the thing is he was right about the FAA's
DEI policies.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Now I don't know if that has anything to do
with this particular crash, but when I read you the policies,
because there has been a lawsuit against them, so this
is all part of the public record, you are not
going to believe who the FAA has been rejecting as employees,
as air traffic controllers and who they've been trying to recruit. Okay,
(27:11):
you're gonna fall out of your chair. Thing the progressive world,
the progressives have made the world so nuts, so dangerous,
so ridiculous. We'll tell you about it all this coming
up after two o'clock, but first, you know, we're going
to talk with Emma James. Now, when you have these situations,
(27:32):
people do naturally start panicking. But the National Review published
something today, and it's worth repeating. There has not been
a fatal commercial aviation accident in the US in nearly
sixteen years. It's two thousand and nine. Happened outside of
Buffalo Cogan Air. If you remember that they had this
icing problem on the wings. Do you know how many
(27:57):
flights there are every year? Since two thousand and nine,
sixteen million flights. Eight hundred million passengers fly every year
on more than sixteen million flights that spent about twenty
five million hours in the air. Those numbers are so
(28:17):
big the human brain can't comprehend them. A conservative estimate
says since the last crash in two thousand and nine,
more than ten billion passengers have flown in the US
on one hundred and fifty million flights that spent more
than two hundred and twenty five million hours in the air,
(28:38):
and nothing bad happened.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
The death toll.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
For commercial aviation in the US since two thousand and
nine is sixty seven. The death toll from wasps over
the same period as over one thousand. And I'm definitely
a thousand times more frightened of wasps than I am
a flying.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And I guess because it's so safe, it's almost too safe,
that the.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Federal government has decided to ignore air traffic control and
not take it seriously anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
And that's why those poor guys are way overworked.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
They're doing ten hours a day, six days a week,
and they have to do several jobs at once.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Like whoever was given the job.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Last night at Reagan Airport had to handle the helicopters
going down from down the Potomac, but he also had
to handle all the planes that were arriving and landing.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
One guy handling that, as I said, two different radio frequencies.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
And it's because flight has been so safe, there has
been no national Well I don't understand why they're going
to just keep up basic the basic maintenance, the minimum
staffing required. It's exactly the same thing, like what happened
to the fire department here in Los Angeles over the
last sixty years, and why they were so terribly understaffed
(30:01):
for the for the Palisades fire. How come no one
in government staffs things like police, fire, air traffic controllers.
And think of all the money that goes for all
the garbage and nonsense, starting with the illegal.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I mean I saw today, I saw today. They knows
them not to be stopped.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
He's still trying to get a twenty five million dollar
package passed in the legislature to help out illegal aliens.
Give them lawyers. We have to pay for illegal aliens
legal representation so they could continue breaking the law and
stay in the country. That's what Newsom wants to spend
the money on. And he cut the state fire budget
(30:43):
last year. When when in God's name is he going
to be removed? And when is this whole progressive, idiot,
absurd philosophy going to be finally destroyed.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Because they're going to us.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I guess the shame of what happened in the Palisades
with that terrible, terrible uh, I wouldn't even call it
an effort.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
They were completely unprepared. The state was unprepared and so
is the city.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
And then a couple of months later, instead of announcing
funding maybe for the LA Fire Department, since we only
have half a fire department, he's not providing the other
half of the funding. He's going to give Illgal Aliens
millions of dollars, twenty five million dollars, which is.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Going to go to lawyers. Just outrageous, unbelievably outrageous.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
We are stupid society if we allow the likes of
Newsome and Karen Bass to continue in power. Incredibly stupid society.
When we come back after two o'clock, Devera's is going
to do the news that We're going to Emma James
the from a Daily mail and she landed at Reagan
Airport last night just minutes before the plane crash and
she was in one of the terminals.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
We're going to talk to her about it. Next.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Debor Mark live in the KFI twenty for our newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI Am six
forty from one to four pm every Monday, through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The John Kobylt Show News
Host
John Kobylt
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