00:00Secretary Duffy, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. I guess the first question I have is what's the fix for Newark Airport in the immediate future? Obviously, I know you have plans for improving the situation in the longer term, but right now there's a crisis. What can be done? What will you do?
00:17Yeah, so a couple things. Immediately, we're in the process of bringing together all the airlines that serve Newark and putting them in a room and having a conversation about how they reduce their capacity in Newark. So if you book a flight, you know it's not going to be delayed or canceled. You're actually going to get on that flight and it's going to fly. But that's a coordination that we have to have through the FAA with all those airlines.
00:39So the Philly TRACON gives a service to Newark. They're the facility that controls that airspace. We do have some air traffic controllers in training. They've been training for some time. They're ready to come online. That'll be helpful with the shortage that we have there. But Jake, this is an infrastructure problem, right? And we've known this infrastructure problem has existed for a very long time. The last administration knew it. No one has done anything.
01:06So for Newark specifically, we are going to rebuild the communication system at Newark. I thought it was going to be eight months, six months. We're pushing to do it faster. Hopefully this summer we get that done. But the key is always safety, right? I don't want people to fly. I'd rather have them delayed or canceled. I'd rather have it take six months than two and a half months to build up that communication system because I want people to get from point A to point B safely. And again, if they have to wait for a flight, I prefer that than something else going wrong with their flight.
01:36Yeah, look, I'm not saying that what's going on right now is a problem created in the last 106 days. Obviously, this goes back beyond the Biden administration, beyond the first Trump administration, literally decades. But this is the situation we're in.
01:53Pete Monteen, our aviation expert here, says that Newark is a microcosm of the problems all over the entire American travel system, air traffic control system.
02:05So beyond the short term fix, getting all the airlines in a room and trying to divert flights to other airports, beyond this problem solving that you want to do in the next few months, what is the larger term goal in terms of making sure that Newark isn't just the tip of the iceberg?
02:25Listen, that's a great question. So again, because we have such old infrastructure, it's 25 to 50 years old, depending on what you're talking about.
02:33That's why you can't let it get to this point, right, where you see issues like Newark. Could that happen somewhere else? It's possible.
02:39And so what we have to do is we're rolling a plan out on Thursday. We're going to need a lot of money from Congress to do this.
02:45It's not going to take 10 years like like Pete suggested. It's going to take three to four years to get this build out done.
02:51You can't snap your fingers and lay fiber or bring in, you know, new radios or new new radar.
02:58Those things take time and we're going to put the time in, the money in and you're going to start to see results sooner than three or four years as this build out happens.
03:07We're also dealing with air traffic controllers. We have a 3000 controller shortage right now in America.
03:12It's been like that for almost a decade. So we've done two things.
03:16We've expanded the capacity for our main academy, which is in Oklahoma City, to get more controllers into the academy and get the best qualified controllers into the academy because we have a 35 percent washout rate.
03:29If we can get that down to 25 percent, we get more young people through and trained up and certified and in towers.
03:35Also, controllers after 25 years of service, they can retire, Jake.
03:40And so we want to say, listen, if if you're an experienced controller and you're willing to stay on after that date of retirement, let's pay them.
03:48We're going to give them 20 percent bonuses up front per year that they stay on and help us with the airspace.
03:53And those two things together, I can't do it tomorrow. I can't do it, you know, in a month.
03:58But over the course of the next year and two years, you're going to see the pressure come off the controllers because we're focusing on the experienced end and the trained up end and resolve this problem.
04:09But all this together, it's going to take it takes a long time.
04:13And that's why I wish the last administration would have seen it.
04:16There are GAO reports that said, hey, the infrastructure is failing and no one did anything with it, Jake.
04:21They spent one point two trillion dollars on infrastructure.
04:25What has gone to the greatest infrastructure in this country, which is air traffic control?
04:29Not much. I can't see it. And so I'm frustrated by that, as you can tell.
04:33Yeah, but we can't look back. We have to look forward and go, how are we going to fix it?
04:37The president has bought into our plan. This is bipartisan in Congress.
04:41Democrats and Republicans agree we all fly. Families fly. So let's get it done.
