Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are two issues we want to talk about today, and these are two very separate issues. Number one is the Louisville crash, the UPS airplane that went down yesterday. And then I also want to talk about air traffic controllers, the shutdown and our staffing issues and the mitigation efforts that we've been deploying to make sure we keep the airspace safe.
(00:21)
So first off, with regard to the crash last night, the NTSB gave a press conference earlier. There are a lot of videos online. A lot of theories have been deployed online based on what folks have seen. We are not in the business of theories. We don't speculate. We are going to wait for the facts to come out and with those facts, we will present them to the American people as well as with the NTSB. I'd also note the FAA has a ground team in conjunction with the NTSB. The both of them are doing great work to get to the facts of what happened.
(01:03)
I do want to extend my condolences to the families of those who lost loved ones in the crash. I did have an opportunity to speak with the union head of the UPS pilots extended my condolences as well. He indicated that he was very good friends with the pilots on that aircraft, so condolences to the families.
(01:26)
This issue though of the aircraft is very different than the second issue, which is air traffic controllers, which by the way, this was not an air traffic control issue. It appears that it was a mechanical issue, so everyone's been clear on that. That is not speculation. Two very separate issues at play.
(01:44)
In regard to air traffic control, we've had a conversation over the course of the last month about some of the challenges that we're having in the airspace. Many of you know that we are 2,000 air traffic controllers short, and we have surged our academy to bring more controllers into our system. We are 20% up in controllers through the academy thus far this year.
(02:09)
I've also offered air traffic controllers who are of the age of retirement, a 20% upfront cash bonus to actually stay on, some of the best controllers we have. Don't retire, keep working for us. All of that has been reducing the pressure on the staffing side of air traffic control. It's working, but it takes years to bring more well-trained, certified controllers into the airspace.
(02:33)
The shutdown is having an impact on our ability to maintain those numbers and dent that 2,000 shortage that we have. You also know we're modernizing the airspace. We have an old set of equipment that we use to control America's airspace. We have though the safest airspace in the world, and that's not because of the equipment, that's because of the well-trained air traffic controllers that we have operating the national airspace.
(03:01)
We received $12.5 billion from the Congress in one big beautiful bill, and we need a total of 31.5 billion to accomplish the mission of completely rebuilding America's airspace. The work has begun. We're transitioning our telecommunications. We're about to announce a project manager to do all of the work for this brand new system. But I want to talk about what's happening over the course of the last month with regard to the shutdown.
(03:30)
Our air traffic controllers and a lot of those who work at DOT, but throughout government, they haven't received paychecks. And many of these employees, they're the head of household, they have their spouse at home, they have a child or two or three, and when they lose income, they are confronted with real world difficulties in how they pay their bills. And so for air traffic controllers, they receive a partial payment in early October. The second payment, they got a big fat zero, no paycheck at all.
(04:02)
Tomorrow, they get a pay stub email on what their next paycheck is going to be. And when that pay stub comes out, that is also going to be zero. So they will have gone a month without any pay. And what we're finding is that our air traffic controllers, because of the financial pressures at home, are taking side jobs. They need to put food in the table, gas in the car, pay their bills.
(04:28)
By the way, I do not want them to take side jobs. I want them to show up for work. We have asked them to show up for work, but I'm not naive to understand that they're trying to figure out how they meet their daily obligations. And so because of that, we have seen staffing pressures throughout our airspace. Those who travel will see that we've had more delays, we've had more cancellations.
(04:53)
We do not want to see disruptions at the FAA or here at DOT. We don't want that. But our number one priority is to make sure when you travel, you travel safely. And that's why as the administrator and I have been talking throughout the day, his team has been working for the last 24, 36, 48 hours crunching data. We're noticing that there's additional pressure that's building in the system.
(05:20)
And again, our priority is to make sure that you're safe. And so we're going to talk about additional measures that we are going to take that's going to reduce their risk profile in the national airspace. And I'm going to turn it over to the administrator to do that. As he walks through what that plan is going to look like, I anticipate there'll be additional disruptions, there'll be frustration.
(05:43)
We are working with the airlines, they're going to work with passengers, but in the end, our sole role is to make sure that we keep this airspace as safe as possible. The administrator is going to talk about all of the tools we're going to deploy. One of them though is going to be that there is going to be a 10% reduction in capacity at 40 of our locations.
(06:08)
The administrator is going to tell you that this is data-based. This is not based on what airline travels has more flights out of what location, this is about where's the pressure and how do we alleviate the pressure. And so I want to thank him for, again, him and his team's great work. He'll lay out what the specifics are of this plan and then we're happy to take questions from all of you. Brian Bedford.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Thank you Mr. Secretary. Again, as the secretary said, our primary mission at the FAA is to manage the airspace in the safest manner possible. That is our only focus. What we have been monitoring on a daily basis, frankly hourly basis, is looking at all of the metrics that we use to surveil the NAS and its health and well-being. And for the most part, we're happy to report that it is running as efficiently today in terms of its safety metrics as it was prior to the lapse.
(07:03)
But as we dig deeper into the data, what we find are issues of fatigue and that our flight controller, our flight controllers are experiencing. And we see that through voluntary safety disclosure reports coming in from commercial air transport pilots. That data has allowed us to focus not on the NAS as a whole, but on specific markets where we're seeing some of these reports come to us.
(07:27)
And as we slice the data more granularly, we are seeing pressures build in a way that we don't feel will, if we allow it to go unchecked, will allow us to continue to tell the public that we operate the airline system in the world and we're not going to react to that. And we intend to be proactive. So we're going to implement measures with our commercial airline industry partners, but this is going to go beyond commercial airspace.
(07:54)
It's going to include restrictions on space launches, restrictions on VFR traffic in certain markets that have continued FAA controller staffing triggers and a host of other countermeasures, if you will, that will give us the highest level of comfort that we're maintaining the safest aviation space in the world. And that's the mission. But we do recognize that the controllers have been working fastidiously for the last five weeks with this huge burden over their head of lack of compensation.
(08:25)
And we are starting to see some evidence that that fatigue is building in the system in ways that we feel we need to work towards relieving some of that pressure. So again, as the secretary said, we've identified 40 high-traffic environment markets. We'll be happy to share that later. We have decided that a 10% reduction in scheduled capacity would be appropriate to, again, continue to take the pressure off of our controllers.
(08:53)
And as we continue to see staffing triggers, there will be additional measures that will be taken in those specific markets. Again, I think it's a holistic plan. I really appreciate the men and women at the FAA who have been working this situation from the get-go. I want to applaud the controllers who continue to come to work on a daily basis keeping our system safe.
(09:12)
But I also want to recognize the fact that the data is telling us we need to do more and we are going to do more. And I want to reassure the American travelers that it is absolutely safe to fly in the American skies. So with that, I'd be happy to turn it over to you, Mr. Secretary, and/or take any questions that you have.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, I do want to reiterate this is proactive. We don't want to find ourselves in a situation… I think the administrator said we don't want, was it the horse out of the barn? And then look back and say there were issues we could have taken that we didn't. So we are going to proactively make decisions that keep the space the airspace safe. With that, we're happy to take any questions.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Dean Shepherds. Just to confirm, those restrictions start Friday, is that correct?
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Those are going to start Friday morning.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
And how many portion those among the airports, the airlines, is this something the airlines going to have to do come their own 10%?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And I'll let Brian address that, but again, it's going to be based on the locations, the 40 locations that we feel the pressure and how that's going to be implemented. Brian, I'll let you answer that.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yes. Well, we'll be meeting with the Airline community this evening to talk about how we'll move to implementation. We want to do this in an organized way. We want to make sure that planes get where they need to go for maintenance and crew. Crews get to where they need to be as we start to implement this drawdown in service.
(10:34)
But it will be restricted to these 40 high volume traffic markets. We're going to ask the airlines to work with us collaboratively to reduce their schedules pro rata through the day. So we're going to look for a ratable reduction across these 40 markets over the next 48 hours.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Back in the envelope, that's 4,000, 3,500, 4,000 flights. And that really, it's a significant number. How do you think the airspace or the system is going to handle that dramatic reduction such a short period of time?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, again, we're trying to lean into the fact that when we see pressures building in these 40 markets, we just can't ignore it. And we're not going to wait for a safety problem to truly manifest itself when the early indicators are telling us we can take action today to prevent things from deteriorating. So the system is extremely safe today. It will be extremely safe tomorrow.
(11:25)
And if the pressures continue to build, even after we take these measures, we'll come back and take additional measures. So again, we're trying to be prescriptive surgical, put the relief where the relief we'll do the most good, but again, we are not going to do anything that will compromise the safety of air transport in the United States.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Thank you. Grady Trimble with Fox Business. I'm wondering in the same vein as David's question, is there a plan to make sure that one airline isn't disproportionately affected or one route or city or multiple cities aren't disproportionately affected by this? And to your knowledge, when was the last time this type of thing happened and how did it go?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Well, I'm not aware, in my 35-year history in the aviation market, where we've had a situation where we're taking these kind of measures. Then again, we're in new territory in terms of government shutdowns. Also, I think we've learned things through the mishap, the tragic accident with DCA and PSA-5342. So our surveillance on the NAS is much different today than it was even a year ago.
(12:31)
The data that we're looking at is much different and more granular today than it was a year ago, and we simply aren't going to ignore that. So again, I think it is unusual just as the shutdown is unusual, just on the fact that our controllers haven't been paid for a month is unusual. These are unusual times and we look forward to a time when we can get back to business as usual.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
How do you apply it proportionately to each airline or is that not part of the plan?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
No, it will be proportionate. We'll be working through that with the airlines this evening as we start to roll this out, recognizing there will be no perfect solution. There are some airlines that operate less than daily service, so how do you reduce 10% of one?
(13:14)
We will work through those issues. We certainly don't want to disrupt service availability in individual city pairs. So we will take all of those factors into consideration.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
One other point on the controllers, I think compared to other shutdowns, our controllers, again, though we are not full staffed, I've laid that out. I think the performance of our controllers showing up for work compared to other shutdowns, I'm proud of them. Many of them have showed up.
(13:41)
But to the administrator's point, many of the same ones who show up continue to show up. Some of those who don't show up, continue to not show up, which means we have those who come to work, they're working longer hours, they're working more days, and that's some of the pressure that we're seeing on them and we want to alleviate that pressure before it would become an issue.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Mr. secretary, realistically, for the American people that are watching this right now, what will this mean practically for air travel? Is this going to lead to more flight delays, more cancellations?
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Well, I think it's going to lead to more cancellations that we're going to work with the airlines to do this in systematic way. And again, we had a conversation about that. I'm concerned about disrupting people's travel. We're coming into a weekend, that doesn't… Listen, I travel. I travel a lot.
(14:32)
We are concerned about that, but we had to have a gut check of what is our job? Is it to make sure there's minimal delays or minimal cancellations or is our job to make sure we make the hard decisions to continue to keep the airspace safe? That is our job, is safety. And so again, when we see pressure, we are going to get ahead of it and make sure that you get to where you're going, point A to point B.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
And how long will these restrictions stay in place until the government reopens and are you any closer to closing parts of the US airspace?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So we're going to, and the FAA and the Administrator are going to continue to do this and with me as well.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Till we see the metrics start to move in the right direction.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
We are going to use data. The data will dictate what we do. Again, if the data goes in the wrong direction, could you see additional restrictions? Yes. If the data goes in the right direction, we will roll this back, but it's going to be data-driven, safety-driven. Yes?
Speaker 6 (15:28):
[inaudible 00:15:28] BS News. A couple questions if I could. First is you mentioned additional measures on top of this. What are those additional measures? And secondly, what happened today or maybe even changed between yesterday when we last were speaking of this that prompted this decision today.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
So the additional measures were the launches that we are going to guardrail at certain times of the day. Launches can be very disruptive to the airspace. They take a lot more attention from controllers. VFR travel, and there was one more that you were-
Speaker 2 (16:04):
So well, I'm going to try to address both questions. So what happened today? What's special about today versus yesterday? The data we've been looking at is the data that we manage, the NAS, whether we were in a shutdown or we're not. We're always looking at the overall health and safety of the NAS, whether we have any critical hot spots.
(16:24)
These are changes that were implemented post-PSA-5342 under the Secretary's leadership. So I'm grateful that that's there and the team of men and women at the FAA work hard managing this data and we're leaning, it's not reactive now it's proactive. And that's the difference. We're not going to wait until we see something flashing red to say, oh, we should take action now. We want to keep everything in the green.
(16:48)
We want to keep all the safety measures within the guardrails that we have that define the safest system of airspace in the world. And these actions, we believe, are sufficient to allow us to continue to keep the safety metrics within the appropriate levels that we want, which is perfect safety.
(17:05)
So yes, it's leaning into it. It's anticipating that if the pressures continue to build through the shutdown, additional measures will be necessary. We're going to go ahead and implement those measures proactively and we'll continue to measure the safety and health of the NAS. Yes.
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Yeah. Chase Williams, Fox Business. I know David alluded to it, but 10% is not an insignificant number. If you guys think about starting at maybe a lesser point such as 5% capacity or maybe even talk about maybe a bigger number such as 15 or 20?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I can tell you a whole panoply of options were evaluated. There's no perfect science here. So it's really trying to look at where the potential pressure points are building what we're seeing in terms of safety disclosure reporting from our commercial air transport pilots. That's informing us.
(17:51)
And then as we get into the granular details on these 40 individual markets, we felt like this was the appropriate next step. That doesn't mean that we won't come in and surgically do more if more is required, or if we see, maybe we've over-corrected, we can certainly take some of the mitigation out.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
But again, we thought 10% was the right number based on the pressure that we were seeing. Yes?
Speaker 8 (18:18):
Please speak a little more to the 40 markets. Are they the busiest markets or is there some other metric you're using to determine which ones they are? Are you going to release the names?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yes, give the specifics.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yes, of course, we'd like to brief our aviation users with more of these specifics. But yes, we'll publish the markets that will be affected. And of course, airlines will be publishing to their customers their implementation of these processes. Again, I just want to be clear that-
Speaker 3 (18:47):
When are you going to release the names of the markets?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
They'll be released tomorrow. What I want to be clear on though is the NAS is safe. These are proactive measures that we're taking to ensure that we can guarantee the American public that NAS is operating at the highest levels of safety. And so we can debate on whether it should have been eight, nine, 10, or 12%, but this is the point where we're going to start.
Speaker 8 (19:16):
Hypothetically, if the shutdown were to end tomorrow, would these restrictions still go into place Friday or is this-
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I think what we're going to want to see is a return to controller performance that's at levels that we were experiencing prior to the shutdown.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Can I just ask, what about how this affect cargo carriers, international flights and GA traffic? Are there any restrictions in any of those?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
So it'll apply to all IFR users and if there are staffing triggers in selected markets, it will apply to VFR traffic as well.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Are you going to protect international flights or no?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I have to tell you, we haven't talked through the international component yet.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
Is there a concern about the economics also because obviously, airlines carry a lot of cargo? Is there any concern as we move forward into this, what the economic impacts of this could be?
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Well, I'll leave the economics to the secretary, but as far as the FAA is concerned, that's not our interest. Our interest is only in maintaining the health and safety of the NAS, full stop.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Listen, there are a lot of equities at play and we think about all those equities, but the number one is safety. And so again, am I concerned about cargo? Yes. Am I concerned about disruption in the airspace on Friday? Yes. But again, we want to make sure we are doing the right measures, implementing the right measures to make sure we have the best outcomes. We've talked to number of the different airlines.
(20:50)
Again, would they be pleased that there's a 10% reduction? Probably not. But are they supportive that we are working overtime to make sure the airspace is safe? Yes. And we will team up and partner with them and make sure that they have enough time to, as best as they can, minimize the disruption to the airspace, to the administrator's point, because it's data-driven. If there was a deal today and the government's going to open tomorrow, which by the way, I've spent time in Congress, that's not the way it works, this will be data-driven.
(21:23)
We get controllers back in facilities and we get staff back up. We will make those decisions as the data drives us. I imagine though, when we do open and we do get pay flowing and we do get controllers back in, there'll be a correlation between those events. So again, this was not taken lightly. There was a lot of effort put into this.
(21:51)
And if you remember with the DCA air crash, a lot of you asked us questions, "Why didn't the FAA see that there were near misses in the airspace and why didn't you stop the cross traffic with helicopters and airplanes?" And I think that was a great question. We learned from that. And so now we look at data and before it would become an issue, we try to assess the pressure and try to make moves before there could be adverse consequences.
(22:18)
And that's what's happening here today. It's level setting with the American people doing the right thing by way of the American people, working with the airlines. And our heart goes out to those who will have flights disrupted. But again, they want to make sure that the FAA team and their DOT team, when they fly, they are going to make it to their destination safely because we've done our work, we are doing our work, and this is what we feel like we have to do to make sure we maintain that safety profile. One last one.
Speaker 7 (22:47):
What would you say to people who are frustrated this weekend? They might have a flight canceled or delayed. What would you tell them?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Anyone has my cell phone number, I'm called based on delays and cancellations. There is frustration and I hear them, but I used to sit in Congress. I don't have any say or any role in what the Congress does with regard to funding. I've continually asked our controllers to come to work. I've thanked those who have come in and done the great work by way of the American people.
(23:18)
And there's been a lot of them. Again, I've met a lot of family men and women who are single income families and they're coming to work because they're patriotic Americans. If I can make one last note, though, and I mentioned this before, many of the controllers said they can survive without one paycheck. They can do that. They put a little money away, they have a little nest egg, they have a rainy day fund.
(23:46)
If the car breaks down or there's an unexpected expense, they can navigate losing one paycheck. They said almost all of them, virtually all of them cannot navigate financially missing two paychecks. And so we see that on the horizon. We need to take action today. But if it gets worse, if we have more issues with our controllers, we will analyze the data and we'll take additional steps.
(24:12)
And again, we don't want to see… If you've seen, we have worked overtime to minimize disruptions as much as possible. And some days there's more delays. Some days there are less delays based on how many controllers are coming to work. We will drive these decisions based on the data that we receive and make the best calls that we can to keep those who travel through the airspace safe. One last one, Grady, and then we're really going to go.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
I got you. Can you just tell us some of the cities that are going to be impacted by this so that people who have travel plans Friday can make [inaudible 00:24:46]?
Speaker 1 (24:45):
We want to be fair to the airlines. Again, they've been good partners. They understand what we're doing. I think we need to talk to the airlines first so they can set up their schedules, their flights to make sure they're prepared to navigate with their customers as we come into the weekend.
(25:07)
So I don't want to do that right now. I think it would be fair to them and to the customers. We're going to travel to make sure they're ready to try to deal with a 10% reduction. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.