Air Traffic Control problems with Alex Stone from ABC News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you are one of those parents that get annoyed
by slang that your kid says, just start using it.
It's suddenly going to become uncool if you start using
some And I just happen to have some of them
in front of me. Alex Stone, ABC News is joining
us now, and Alex, I know you. You use stuff

(00:23):
to mess with your kids, don't you?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
You have so much riz you're right.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do you know what bop means? Bop
bop bomb.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Sounds like something out of the like the fifties of
the Big.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Bopper, Yeah, shibop or yeah, I don't know, bop op. Yeah, yeah,
it means it means someone who has a lot of
romantic partners, as in someone who bops around from person
to person.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Okay, we used to say slut.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah it's a couple more well one more letter. But yeah,
it's Unfortunately that's used in cyberbullying too. Bob and that's
you know, you're trashing somebody if if they're a slut
or a male prostitute.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Remember Dan Seals had a song called Bob, I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
Wanna bup We keep baby, Oh my long.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
I think he meant something totally different.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Probably.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
So here's another one, mogging m og g I n g.

Speaker 5 (01:24):
Uh, I think I do know this. My kids say
mugging though, where you do you make this like face
of well, I don't know what.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
How does it describe it?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
It means outdoing somebody by being more attractive, skilled, or successful.

Speaker 5 (01:38):
Well, then you probably did say, right, mogging like the
mugging face of this or no. And then there's mewing,
where my son will do this whole thing where you
like run your fingers along your face.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
I don't know, mewing.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, that's the little the like the finger on the
jowel line thing or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's. Yeah, we kind of running it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
Uh huzz h u z z huzz huz like fuzz
with an h.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
No, Okay, I'm going to say that you got like swagger,
you got.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Huzz another term for an attractive girl or someone you
want to impress, huzz huzz chopped, which is the opposite
of huzz, meaning something ugly, undesirable, or unattractive. So if
they ever you hear, you know your kid's going, man,
she was chopped. Well you know what they're saying there.
And then finally there's a whole list of these vers

(02:32):
is a couple phantom tax, f A n U M tax.

Speaker 4 (02:37):
Phantom tax.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
It comes from a streamer popular on Twitch and Instagram,
and it means playfully stealing food from your friend's plate.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Phantom tax.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Is that kind of like the dad tax exactly, That's
exactly it. But those are a couple of you. You know,
you hear your kids using some of these and you're like,
that is stupid. I wish they'd stop start using it,
and they will stop.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh, I know, people will be word. I always misuse it. Sorry, Chuck.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
I'm trying to figure out something like does somebody sit
down and work this out ago, I'm going to create
this word and it's quite or is it just like
a slip of the lip they say something stupid and
decide to give it a meaning because if they said still.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
Made up stuff that goes back to YouTubers like video
game YouTubers where and then it.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Takes off from there.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
And I'm sure we had words too that our parents
were like what are they talking about? But we didn't
have the YouTube and social media world for it to
spread where it was all around the world at the
same time.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Right, and it gets exposed much quicker now and can
be defunct much quicker if us, you know, old people
get together and start using them.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
Yeah, there are a lot of words where my son
will say to my daughter that was so like two
or three months ago.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
We don't use it any longer.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
And that's not we don't. We don't say that anymore.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
And and uh, did you happen to see I actually
was messing with Stone and I told him I got
I got him that thing.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
I sent you a picture of the Mary Risthmus.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I meant to respond to that. I was driving. Yeah
that was great.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
Yeah, it's a sweater. Look at this, chuck.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
I saw it today at Cole's and I was there
and I was there returning an Amazon thing and I
saw Mary Rismus, which is totally oh my gosh. He's mortified.
He was like, I will kill you if you try
to get that. You know, this is just so funny.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Watch I just have to get it to wrap it up.

Speaker 5 (04:25):
And so he opens it up and sees it as
the boys mess kids improper term where yeah do you
guys have a riantastic day?

Speaker 1 (04:34):
And they're like, dad, stop, I love I love saying
stuff like that because he's like, bro.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
Bro Bro, and I know it's Bra and they're like,
it's not Bra, it's bra I or bro Bro. They're like, no, Dad,
no it's Bra.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Well they'll they'll do that and he'll even say it
to my wife.

Speaker 5 (04:55):
He'll be like bro you know, oh no, they call
me that too. And I'm like, I am not your
bra a bro or your bra.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
That and that And that's not even new. That is
straight out of Spiccoli's mouth. That's fast times at Ridgemont
high slang.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
Yeah yeah here, dude, yeah right or nah.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
I'm like just say no, we don't even go nah
like you.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Know, yeah yeah exactly. Man, Oh my gosh if we
sat here, we could probably do that for another half
an hour, all these silly things.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
But I do it just a mess with my kid, exactly.
I just do it to mess with my kids.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Man.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
It's just so fun. I mean right, it's a ride
of passage. As a dad, you get to do that,
That's exactly.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
It's like God told me it was okay, I'm allowed
to mess with you. That's what I'm doing. That's what
happens man.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
I I you know, during this shutdown, you know, we
know the air traffic controllers and all that. I was
in shock to see what was going on in Burbank
yesterday and I just said, wait a minute, how are
they You know, Jenny and I this morning we're watching
stuff before you know, come in and I saw that
story and I go, how are they even able to function?
Don't you have to have somebody moving stuff around in

(06:03):
the air? Like, how is it that we didn't see
something catastrophic?

Speaker 4 (06:07):
Planes colliding with each other. This is crazy, Alex, It
is crazy.

Speaker 5 (06:11):
But there's gonna be more of it tonight, not Mburbing,
but elsewhere. So yeah, this all went down at quicker
than we thought. You remember, we were saying a few
days ago that the TSA officers would begin calling out
sick and air traffic controllers and whatnot because they're not
getting paid, but they're mandated to get to go in,
but you got to pay for childcare and gas and
everything else. And this is beginning pretty quickly. Transportation Secretary

(06:35):
Sean Duffy says, Yeah, the sick calls are beginning to
come in as the air traffic controllers are saying, you
know what, I'm not getting paid, I'm not coming in
and he's saying, we're tracking sick calls sickly and have
we had a slight tick up in sick calls?

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yes, and then you'll see delays that come from that.

Speaker 5 (06:52):
And he says those who are on the job, they're
thinking about other things right now because they're not getting paid.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
What they think about.

Speaker 5 (06:57):
As they're control in our airspace is how am I
going to pay my mortgage?

Speaker 2 (07:02):
How do I make my car payment?

Speaker 5 (07:03):
And so today the FAA is saying it does not
have enough staffing for tonight for the towers in Chicago
and in Nashville, and the centers that are handling the
regions around Vegas, Houston, Boston, and arrivals and departures in Newark,
New Jersey. So it's going to be another rough night tonight.
But last night in the centers had handled the Rocky
Mountain region out of Denver and in Phoenix and in Indianapolis,

(07:26):
they had shortages and they had to slow down aircraft
and not put as many in the region. But there
were no controllers at all in the air traffic control
tower in Burbank. And it is a busy airport, a
lot of Southwest flights in and out along with the
United and Delta and American Frontier and others. And from
four fifteen yesterday afternoon to ten o'clock at night, the

(07:46):
tower was closed, but the airport was open, and as
it was closing, they were giving last clearances. Amid confusion
of what was going to go on. The pilots were like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
what's happened?

Speaker 4 (07:56):
Was?

Speaker 2 (07:56):
I think to stow up?

Speaker 4 (07:57):
And for a few when one and Isola eight.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
On a clew the audio from live atc dot net
and then they closed tower.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
Burban Cowers posed monitors on and.

Speaker 5 (08:06):
So once they closed, controllers one hundred and fifty miles
away in San Diego at SoCal Center they gave takeoff
and landing clearances, but otherwise pilots were on their own,
and they had to announce their locations and their intentions
to other aircraft in the area. It's what you do
in like a small cessna at an airport in the
middle of nowhere. But they were having to do this
in congested LA airspace into busy airport, small but busy

(08:30):
airport like this Southwest flight announcing watch out everybody, I'm
taking off and watch out.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Burbank traffic the south seven three, seven eight, the partying
runway one five at Burbank.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
And nobody responds to him. That's just him making the announcement.

Speaker 5 (08:45):
We are rolling watch out and then when somebody would land,
then they would say that they had cleared the runway
and the next plane behind them could come in.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
That they had to do all.

Speaker 5 (08:52):
This on their own, so they were calling all this
out and to get their their route and clearance beforehand,
they had to call on their phone. They were given
a phone number to call to get all that. So
it was all very odd at a busy airport. But
but passengers at Burbank, they weren't thrilled about it.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
That's a little scary to think about it that way,
because you'd like to have somebody local that can see
what's going on visually.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Right, It's a little scary, right, I'm better run it myself.

Speaker 5 (09:17):
But that's how they had to do it last night,
And we're going to see tonight in Chicago and Nashville
and elsewhere how they end up doing it, and if
they have to shut down the towers as well. But
this is going to get worse as the shutdown goes on,
as more and more people call out sick, and then
the TSA. If history repeats itself, the TSA is not
far behind. They're going to be getting calling out if
they're not already, and they'll have to start shutting down

(09:38):
the TSA checkpoints. So this is the beginning of it.
We need the shutdown to end here pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, and guess who is going to Las Vegas this weekend?

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Well, there you go, this guy.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah, on Sunday, I'm flying out.

Speaker 5 (09:53):
But again, members of Congress are getting paid, so you know,
it's creative. They could exempt the air traffic and rollers
and the TSA officers.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
I mean those kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
I mean, if you're considered you know, we had this
conversation to Alex that if you're considered essential, there should
be emergency funding for these people. Sorry, And they might
be going, well, yeah, I know, where do you draw
the line. Well, wherever you draw the line as far
as essential is that's where you draw the line, right,
But as far as essential safety and commerce and everything ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
What is happening right now?

Speaker 1 (10:26):
And I'm look, you know, depending on where you get
your information and all that, we can go over what
is holding all of this up or what has shut
us down all of those things. Sure, but during this process,
this is insane. What is happening right now that is
being allowed to happen. This is insanity.

Speaker 5 (10:44):
And how many clon calls on runways where you've heard
air traffic controllers yelling stop, stop stop from the tower.
They're not up there right now in these cases, and
so that's why a lot of flights were canceled and
others were delayed, like because you have to space them
out a lot more. But I mean, this is really
the eyes are or when this is going on, are
not on the runway from the tower. There's nobody watching.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
It's like, you know, when you have people saying they
should be going anyway, you want to say to them,
are you getting paid?

Speaker 4 (11:12):
And if whoever said they should.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Be going anyway because it's going to do this or
that to the nation, if they're being paid, it's like,
shut up, you don't you don't have a dog in
this fight, because I wouldn't want to go to work,
I know, and they tell me you got.

Speaker 4 (11:25):
To come in and do a show every day. Anyway.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
You're gonna get paid eventually, but we don't know exactly
when I might be going, well, hang on a minute,
wait a minute kind of a thing. So I don't
really fault anybody who's going I'm not going in.

Speaker 4 (11:38):
I'm not getting paid.

Speaker 5 (11:39):
Well, you think about like TSA officers who are essentially
making pretty close to minimum wage. I'm just the folks
who are there doing they checking your bags, going through.
In many cases they may be able to make more
going to fast food or going somewhere else. So if
they can get paid immediately and go do another job,
even though they're told it is mandatory, you come in
if you're getting paid twenty two dollars an hour or

(12:01):
twenty one dollars an hour, and your boss says you
have no choice, you're gonna lose your job. You know,
you might say, all right, then fine, I'm gonna go
over to Burger King and you know, make burgers over
there to Amazon and make twenty eight dollars or thirty
dollars an hour. So it's hard to convince people who
aren't getting paid a ton. I think the average TSA
officer nationwide is like twenty four dollars an hour. That

(12:21):
they aren't getting paid a ton to mandate that they
have to come into work without getting paid.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
And then what's going to happen now when we come
out of this, You're going to have people who decided
to go, well, I'm gonna go do whatever, and now
you're gonna have to rehire because you're going to have
a bunch of people.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
There's gonna be gaps in this. There's gonna be holes.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Even when they start paying everybody again, they'll be the
people who said, oh, I took an I'm glad it happened.
I picked up six bucks an hour in my next
job or whatever. Yeah, so it's it's insane. I hope this,
you know, sooner rather than later. And you know, not
my trip this weekend. Notwithstanding, it's just one of those
things that I feel it is so so dangerous what's

(13:00):
happening right now, and God forbid yet anything catastrophic happens out.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Of this, you know absolutely.

Speaker 5 (13:06):
And in the meantime, they have to slow everything down,
so you know, flights are two and a half already today, Vegas,
all these areas where they don't have enough staffing, everything's
already heavily delayed.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
Insane, man, insane.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Alex Stone, ABC News and Alex, thanks for the latest
on Thanks seeing man