US Airlines Brace for Busiest Thanksgiving Travel Period

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00:00So Benny, it'll be the first real test of the systems, the airspace systems and I guess the shortage of air traffic controllers

00:08and whether there is still a shortage since the shutdown. How are we looking?

00:13So it will be a big test really for everyone involved from politicians to the traveling public and their patients and also the system itself.

00:21The U.S. aviation system has been under considerable strain particularly in the last couple of weeks.

00:26We had the government shutdown and that meant that they dialed back the number of movements and that really put a lot of stress on the system.

00:33That is now resolved but at the same time sort of getting everything back up to speed has taken time.

00:39So this will be a real test. Are things back to normal? Are all the movements sort of coordinated again?

00:46How are we looking on the air traffic control side? That's one of the choke points, always has been.

00:51And we are expecting more than 30 million people on the road in the air in the next couple of days.

00:58That's going to be a real test to how the system responds.

01:02And don't forget we are entering a phase of really bad weather in some parts of the country.

01:06So that's potentially turning into a toxic cocktail and will be interesting to see how that exactly turns out.

01:13Yeah, and I'm also reading of fuel supply constraints. Is that air fuel and how did that happen, Benny?

01:20Yeah, there were some issues particularly in the Seattle area where we had some fuel constraints.

01:25And that is sort of one additional thing. If you take it all together, we've had the air traffic control shortage.

01:30We've had the lingering issues from the shutdown, the fuel constraints, the weather.

01:34We have a new check-in system that's being introduced and rolled out across the country, sort of a faster sort of check-in system.

01:41All those things combined, it could go well. But given the number of people, sort of the mass migration of people that we will see,

01:48there will be areas where things will go wrong. Look at places like Atlanta, Chicago, LA, New York, JFK in particular.

01:56Those are the big gateways and that's where you will probably see the biggest crunch points.