00:00Let's bring in David Dunn, who's a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham here in the UK.
00:06Thank you so much for joining us.
00:07It is actually no secret that U.S. air traffic control systems are very, very old.
00:12I think some are even still using floppy disks just to give one a sense of how bad it is.
00:17Is it fair to blame anyone here?
00:21I think you can point to the systematic failure of America's ability to invest consistently in its infrastructure.
00:29America is the richest country in the world.
00:31There's a huge amount of money available.
00:34There's a recognition of what needs to be done in aviation, as in the electrical grid, and indeed in other
00:41parts of infrastructure.
00:42What there is is a political inability to invest in these programs and keep a consistent bipartisan support to ensure
00:51that these things are followed through and invested in.
00:54Instead, what we get is partisan politics, the cancellation of investment programs, and in the case of Mr. Trump's administration,
01:05a priority of tax cuts and deregulation rather than investing in what needs to be fixed.
01:12We heard about this report from the GAO, which is sort of an independent auditor, in September this year saying
01:20this is a real problem and this sort of administrative bottleneck around letting the funding out was going to become
01:29really problematic.
01:30Do you think ultimately Congress is to blame?
01:34It's a combination of a lack of ability of Congress to do this and the agencies themselves to actually follow
01:41these things through.
01:42Again, the Trump administration is responsible ultimately for the implementation and it is the administration that is the one that
01:51puts these things into effect.
01:52And just now, there are short 3,000 air traffic controllers, for example, Trump has sacked all the probationary officers
02:01as part of his government attempts to cut money on these things.
02:04And it actually lacks competence in terms of having seasoned, experienced, professional people in post to actually spend the money
02:14and get these things done.
02:16American politics, American politics, American government, is dysfunctional partly because it's broken as a consequence of the partisan divisions that
02:25actually mean that even though there is money to do these things and a clear plan for what needs to
02:32happen, it just doesn't get done.
02:35So here's the big question for anyone considering travelling in or out or across the USA.
02:41Could this sort of thing happen again?
02:44Well, the Americans are very proud of their aviation safety records, and yet we have seen crashes at major airports
02:52on the East Coast, partly because, again, governments change the movement of government on military authorized planes in the airspace,
03:03disrupting the Federal Aviation Authority's plans for the movement of commercial traffic.
03:08So, yes, while it is a very heavily regulated airspace, there are occasions when that system doesn't work.
03:17In this case, of course, the FAA shut down all traffic when they realized there was a problem.
03:22That whole safety-first ethos is based on years of experience, what they talk about as experience written in blood.
03:29And that is the priority of these things, but it can result in disruption when the safety-first priority is
03:36put into place.
03:37Thank you so much for sharing your views with us.
03:39David Dunn, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham.
