United Airlines CEO calls for Senate Dems to pass 'clean' stopgap funding bill

Watch United Airlines CEO calls for Senate Dems to pass 'clean' stopgap funding bill - New York Post on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Thank you, Secretary Duffy. Thank you all for being here

00:04with us today. And I want to start by really thanking the professionals, the air traffic

00:09controllers, the folks at the TSA, also the FAA, the people in management. They're working hard.

00:14They are keeping the skies safe. They've minimized delays. Fewer than 2 percent of

00:19flights have been delayed so far because of the air traffic control shortage. So they've done a

00:22great job. But it's putting stress on people. It's not fair to those people. It's also putting

00:28stress on the economy. You know, the first couple of weeks, this had no impact on the

00:31economy. But as every day goes by, the impacts start to grow. And airlines are a pretty good

00:36real-time indicator of the economy. And we start to see still minor but steep booking impact.

00:42And you see that happening in the economy. We put the whole economy at risk. And so it's

00:45been 30 days. And while I don't have a position on which part is inside and how things should

00:51be settled with health care, it has been 30 days. I also think it is time to pass a clean

00:56CR. Use that as the opportunity to get into a room behind closed doors and negotiate hard

01:01on the real and substantive issues that the American people want our politicians on both

01:05sides of the aisle to solve. But let's get a clean CR and get that negotiation done behind

01:10closed doors without the pressure and without putting the American workers and the American

01:14economy at risk.

01:15Yeah. Great. Okay, guys, we'll take a few questions. Yeah. Go ahead.

01:18Thanks, Mr. Vice President. I'm Mary Martyr with Daily Wire. We're coming up on the one-year

01:23anniversary of this really tragic plane crash in D.C. Should Americans be afraid to fly

01:28while the shutdown is in D.C.?

01:30No, I don't think Americans should be afraid to fly because we've got great airline professionals

01:34who are keeping the safest aviation industry in the world afloat. But they're doing it with

01:39incredible stress. What I worry more about is that if you have, let's say, a pilot who's

01:43now missed two paychecks, who's now telling his kids that they can't do things that they'd

01:48like to do, who's now worried about feeding his family, maybe that guy doesn't show up

01:52to work. Maybe he goes and gets a different job. That means greater delays for the American

01:55people. I worry about the air traffic controller who now has missed two paychecks, who's got

01:59to pay his credit card bill or his mortgage but can't pay both and decides, you know what,

02:04this industry is not for me. The Secretary of Transportation made a great point in private.

02:08I'm going to steal it right now because we've got to get people into the air traffic control

02:12industry. We had a shortage of 2,000 people. How many of those people look to the future,

02:17see the congressional Democrats, can't get their act together and say, you know what,

02:19we're not going to join air traffic controlling at all, which is going to further extend the

02:23delays. I think that we have a safe system because these guys are doing heroic things

02:28in the midst of this terrible shutdown. But why do we ask them to do so much without getting paid?

02:34Why don't we pay them so that they can be happy, they can do the best job they can do,

02:37and they're not worried about feeding their families while they're doing a very important job for all of us.