Transportation Secretary Buttigieg Holds News Briefing on Holiday Travel Transcript

All right. Morning everybody. Everyone set with the audios, camera, et cetera? Okay, good.

(00:09)
Well, thanks for joining us this morning. Appreciate the opportunity to speak with you about holiday air travel. I’m joined of course by Mike Whitaker, our FAA Administrator, who has wasted no time since hitting the ground running just a little under two months ago to prioritize safety and to advance the FAA. Mike and I were just up in the tower here at DCA looking at one of the busiest and most complex operations in America. This one runway, runway 1/,19 is the single busiest runway in the national airspace. They handle between 850 and 950 takeoffs and landings a day at this airport, almost all of them on that particular runway. And seeing the men and women who make all of that possible is just a reminder of how incredible the work is that keeps our aviation system safe, so we really appreciate the work of everyone in the tower and across the national airspace for the job that they do and I want to thank DCA for hosting us.

(01:11)
I wanted to take a little bit of time today to talk about air travel in terms of what Americans need to know and in terms of how the Department of Transportation and the FAA are working to help airlines prevent delays in cancellations, and to protect consumers and passengers. The first thing I should mention is that we may see some bad weather impacting travel around Christmas and New Year’s. FAA is working closely with airlines to plan for that possibility. We get down-to-the-minute weather predictions from National Weather Service meteorologists and use those to inform exact arrival and departure routes across the busiest parts of the US airspace. So if you are concerned about weather affecting your travel plans, please remember to check directly with your airline for the most up-to-date information about your flight.

(02:02)
Now I want to zoom out and talk a little bit about the last three years, because I think it bears repeating that when President Biden took office about three years ago, the biggest concern at the time around the nation’s Airlines was whether they would be able to stay in business. And at the time, we were thinking about how many years or decades it would take for the US aviation sector to recover. Instead, what happened was that the entire economy, including the aviation sector, recovered swiftly during the Biden economic recovery, which of course included demand coming back faster than most forecasters had thought possible, which led to the opposite problem. Airlines struggling to keep up with demand, leading to a number of disruptions in 2022.

(02:50)
We also remember what happened about one year ago, around Christmas of 2022, when Southwest canceled about 17,000 flights and left millions of people impacted by that, hundreds of thousands of them stranded. Some people here probably experienced that firsthand. At the time, I made clear that we would be putting Southwest under a microscope, and since that time, we have engaged to determine what they’re doing to prevent that from happening again, to look over their shoulder as they have reimbursed impacted passengers with hundreds of millions of dollars, and to conduct an investigation to hold them accountable for those failures and send a signal to the rest of the airline industry. That investigation is now complete, and yesterday we announced that Southwest will pay $35 million in direct cash penalties as part of a $140 million total penalty, which is by far the largest that this department has ever ordered, on top of about $600 million in refunds and reimbursements for passengers.

(03:53)
On top of the 35 million, we are requiring Southwest to deliver $90 million to compensate future passengers whose flights are affected by controllable cancellations and delays. These steps are designed to send a message to the airline sector that if you fail to take care of passengers, our department will hold you accountable. We also take our responsibilities seriously across the board when it comes to consumer protection, doing right by those who were stranded last year, but also, beyond holiday travel, the overall health of the system. The number of disruptions we saw in 2022, even on blue sky days, were unacceptable, and DOT took action at every level to improve conditions for passengers. While the number one cause of disruptions was weather, followed by airlines, some were also related to air traffic control staffing and availability. That accounted for less than 10% of delay minutes, but more than zero is cause for action, which is why we have been so focused on growing the air traffic controller workforce. And I can tell you that after years of that number going down and down and down, we have accelerated hiring for new air traffic controllers.

(05:10)
That number is finally growing. In other words, hiring is now taking place at a faster rate than attrition, but needs to pick up the pace. Meanwhile, we continue pushing airlines to do better on their end and held them accountable when they didn’t. And with credit to the airlines that stepped up, that has worked. Winter weather will be a challenge. It will certainly be a challenge in the next few weeks, but even during the busiest days of Thanksgiving, travel cancellation stayed below 1%. In fact, so far this year, I don’t want to jinx us, but so far, 2023 has seen the lowest cancellation rate. We have pressed for more airlines to guarantee free family seating. More airlines are doing that. I would like for all of them to do it, and we’re examining a rule that would make that the norm. We don’t believe anybody should have to pay extra just to sit next to their kids. We also pushed airlines in the summer 2022 to cover rebooking meals, hotel vouchers, when they cause a cancellation or a delay. Before we intervened two years ago, not one of the 10 largest airlines guaranteed those kinds of protections. Now, nearly all of them do. All of them cover meals. Most of them cover hotels and ground transportation, which is money back in the pockets of American travelers. For travelers who want to know which airlines do guarantee family seating or exactly what they offer when you have a cancellation or a delay, you can go to our dashboard at flightrights.gov for up-to-date information. I encourage travelers to get that information before traveling. I want to emphasize the practical impact of that transparency, because when we put airlines on notice that we were going to publish that dashboard, it took just a few days for all of them to change their customer service policies.

(06:54)
I also want to remind everybody that if your flight gets canceled for any reason, you are entitled to a full refund if you choose that instead of rebooking. And if you’re having trouble getting airlines to honor that, we are here to support you. Under President Biden, we have now helped to get airlines to issue over $3 billion in refunds, and we’ll continue to have passengers back this holiday season.

(07:18)
Bottom line, if an airline lets its passengers down, we are here to hold them accountable. And while nobody controls the weather, we are going to use every tool at our disposal, in partnership with the airlines, to keep cancellations and delays as low as possible. Mike is going to say more about that effort in just a moment. We are seeing more people flying than ever in US history, with fewer cancellations than we have seen in years. We’re investing to keep it that way, and so the last thing I just want to emphasize is the infrastructure work that we are doing. Under President Biden’s infrastructure plan, which has billions of dollars for airports, we are adding check-in counters, building smoother, faster security checkpoints, improving baggage claim, making it easier

Here to find a gate in some cases building entire new terminals. In fact, today we’re announcing another $66 million, just the latest round of airport improvements around the country. That includes terminal work in Yakima, Washington, in Amarillo, Texas, in Great Falls, Montana. It includes ATC Tower improvements at Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and Joplin, Missouri, and new snow removal equipment, which will be used in Canby, Minnesota and in Lewiston, Idaho among other places. And this is just the beginning when it comes, or the tip of the iceberg, I should say, when it comes to the work that we’re doing on physical infrastructure. So with that, let me turn it over to our administrator, Mike Whitaker at the FAA, to share a little more about the work that’s going on over there. Mike.

Good morning everyone. Thank you for that introduction. It’s great to be here with you, Secretary Pete. As the secretary mentioned, we are preparing for a busy holiday travel season. Our safety teams will work around the clock, so passengers are safe from takeoff to touchdown. I’ve been on the job for eight weeks and my focus has been almost exclusively on safety. Starting with the Independent Safety Review team report, which examined ways to enhance safety and reliability throughout our national airspace. We’ve already taken action on several recommendations effective two weeks ago. The head of the Air Traffic Safety Oversight Organization now reports directly to me. We are filling every seat at the Air Traffic Control Academy in Oklahoma City. We’re expanding the use of advanced training across the country with new facilities in Chicago and San Diego, and soon also in Nashua and Phoenix. We’re working with aeronautical colleges and universities to move graduates quickly to on-the-job training from those facilities. And we’re deploying tower simulator systems in 95 facilities over the next two years. The first system will be deployed next month in Austin, Texas.

(10:11)
We know we need more air traffic controllers. We’re working hard to hire from a variety of sources and keep them moving through the training pipeline. As the Chief Recruitment Officer for the agency, I want to let everyone know that in early spring we’ll be starting to take applications for the general public to go to our Air Traffic Control Center in Oklahoma City. These are great jobs. They’re not easy jobs, but they’re important and very rewarding jobs. So we’re looking forward to expanding the pipeline there. So tell your kids, your nieces, your nephews, and look for more information on our website faa.gov. I also want to take a moment to thank the controllers who will be working throughout the holiday season to make sure that everyone gets to their destination safely, just like they did so successfully over Thanksgiving. In addition to their hard work, we’re taking additional steps to keep traffic safe and smooth over these holidays.

(11:16)
We’ve opened military airspace that will be available for moving north-south traffic on the East Coast. We’re cooperating with the commercial space industry to limit launches during peak travel season. And we’ve also opened up this year 169 additional East Coast routes to accommodate more traffic. So as Secretary Pete mentioned, we’re expecting a very busy season, but the FAA and the Department of Transportation are up to the challenge. I would remind all travelers, please be nice to your flight crews. They’re there for your safety, and we have zero tolerance for disruption of flight crews. So thank you for coming today. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Secretary Pete for opening up for some questions.

Great, thank you, Mike. Just before we go to questions, a final thing that I wanted to emphasize. One of this airport’s many charms is the view of the United States Capitol. I remember being a high school student on a program for students to become more familiar with Washington. Arriving here and looking out at that Capitol dome, I want to emphasize that what goes on in this building and what goes on in that building are not isolated from one another. Every time that there are threats from the house GOP to slash funding for transportation that endangers the progress that we are making right now. If we come back from the holidays in January and are facing another countdown to a shutdown that imperils all of the progress that’s been going on, we’re doing everything we can with what we have.

(12:54)
But if we have to go back to slowing down on modernizing our technological systems, if an extremist Republican shutdown means we have to stop training and hiring, that will have impacts across the national airspace and it will lead to more disruptions to air travel. So I have to say, when you see some of the same elected officials always ready to make a partisan issue of any travel disruption, over there laying the groundwork for a shutdown or savage cuts or both, they can’t have it both ways. And I’m hopeful that we will get the support we need from Congress to continue the work of modernizing the technology and growing the workforce for air traffic control. And with that, with some quarterbacking from my colleague Alexandra, we will go right over to questions.

[inaudible 00:13:44].

Well, this is exactly why we thought it was important both to look over their shoulder as they took care of passengers affected by the last meltdown, and to have accountability to ensure a strong economic incentive, never to let that happen again. For any airline that is considering delaying or deferring the work it takes in terms of hiring staffing equipment to prevent a meltdown, I want them to look at the example of how much Southwest had to pay. $600 million in refunds and reimbursements and a 140 million in penalties as a very good reason to not let that happen in the first place. So I can’t speak for Southwest, and we’re not telling them which IT system to buy. We’re telling them not to let this happen again. And my sense is that they have learned that the hard way, but also the entire industry needs to see this as a signal that we’re taking accountability to a different level. The cash element alone of this penalty was almost 10 times the most we’ve ever assessed against an airline because we want to change the incentive and change the behavior in the sector.

[inaudible 00:15:09].

Well, the delays in the system are primarily caused by weather and operational delay. So for air traffic control, it’s less than 10%. So it’s a small part of the puzzle. We will make sure that safety is always above efficiency, so if there is a shortage of air traffic controllers, we would reduce traffic to accommodate and make sure that everyone is traveling safely. Having said that, we haven’t had to do that other than on the East Coast in

In the system generally. As far as fatigue goes, we’re taking this issue very seriously. We’re looking at launching a group to examine fatigue among air traffic controllers in the very short term to identify if there are risks, and if there are, we’ll act accordingly to mitigate those risks.

I’ll let Mike start on that one.

Well, I think the flights are very full and so can be a pretty stressful experience flying. That’s certainly part of it, and I think we’ve just continued to see less civil behavior than we have in airports. So I think what we can do is make it very clear that we have zero tolerance for that and we will prosecute any of those cases to the fullest extent.

Only thing I’ll add to that is just a message and the message is largely backed by what the FAA is doing and the referrals for prosecution. When somebody does something that endangers their flight crews. I guess my message is not endangering your fellow passengers is kind of the bare minimum here. Obviously don’t do that. Also, it would be nice if you could say something nice to the people who are getting you to where you’re going. The number of people from flight attendants to pilots, to the folks pushing the wheelchairs here at the airport, to the people who clean the plane. All of those people have a part in getting you to where you’re going. Let’s say in addition to not assaulting anyone, be nice to them and thank them for what they’re doing to get you to your loved ones this holiday season.

You mentioned that cancellations are, but how concerned are you that delays picked up a little bit and then complaints against airlines massively surged [inaudible 00:17:54]?

So when it comes to the complaints, we take that as a sign that passengers believe they will get results when they complain to our department. We’ve been urging people to bring their complaints to us when an airline doesn’t provide a required refund, for example, or they believe that the airline isn’t living up to its commitments. Now, that does create a lot of workload for a small but mighty team of investigators and personnel that we have at DOT, but they work day in, day out to process that, and I think our follow-up on those complaints has clearly made a difference in terms of people getting their money back or getting taken care of. So it’s tough to know what the baseline is there, given how much we work we’ve done to encourage people to speak up. What I’ll say is that we’re going to keep working to address those complaints and make sure the airlines do the right thing.

(18:38)
In terms of delays, they’re higher than we would like them to be. Right now, the rate of on-time performance, historically it’s set somewhere between the high seventies and occasionally goes over 80%. Right now it’s at 76%. I’d like to see it work back up toward 80%. And as we’ve gotten cancellations to an unusually low level, what I’d like to see us work on going into next year is keep cancellations nice and low and see what we can get the airlines to do to be more consistent on the delay front, get back up toward the high 70s and eventually to 80 and better.

[inaudible 00:19:12].

Well, a lot of it is making sure that the airlines have that economic incentive. It’s one of the reasons why we’re looking at a compensation rule for major delays, which would mean not only does airline have to cover your hotel or your meal if you’re stuck in the airport for a long time, but actual cash compensation for the cost to your time. And by the way, there’s a bit of an experiment underway in terms of Southwest’s required $75 vouchers that they’ll be doing for the next three years. It will be interesting to see if other airlines decide to do that, not as punishment, but as competition. We’ll see what happens while simultaneously working on the rule.

(19:50)
The point is we got to make sure we keep applying pressure with incentives for airlines to do their part. Now, the other part that we have to face is that the number one cause of delays is and has always been weather. And the inescapable reality is that extreme weather has systematically increased over the years, and every scientist and meteorologist I’ve consulted thinks it will continue to do so if we cannot completely avoid what is already upon us, despite all of our good work on mitigating the effects of climate change, we need to prepare for that too and work with airlines, including in terms of realistic scheduling to accommodate those realities.

[inaudible 00:20:30]

So let me take those three pieces in turn on the rule. We want to do it soon, but I don’t have a date to announce right now on that. We got to make sure we do it right. On the vouchers, it will be very interesting to see how the market responds to this. It’s part of an enforcement action, but as part of that enforcement action, Southwest just became the highest level that is there. Others offer, I think, 25 points or some combination of miles. Whether their competitors will respond by matching is something I’ll be interested to see. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to see that, but it’s not going to stop us from working on the rule because what we’ve see in a lot of other jurisdictions is frankly a much higher level. So we don’t really know yet how the market will respond, but we’re certainly going to be watching closely and I think that will provide data points that can inform the rulemaking. Did I miss the third? I’m trying to-

Look forward other [inaudible 00:21:47].

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we’ve set a new precedent that includes several things. One thing that we’ve done with that precedent is basically added a zero to the severity of historic penalties to make sure that they actually work. Another is to signal that we’re willing to be creative about how to keep the majority of the value going, not to the treasury, but to the passenger. It’s going to vary from case to case, but given that we successfully arrived at that compensation regime as part of the settlement here, I think it’s definitely going to become part of the toolkit in future enforcement actions. We’d rather not have to do the enforcement action in the first place, but if and when we do. This, alongside cash has become a new mechanism that we may turn to.

[inaudible 00:22:36].

Well, it’s really about the resilience of the system. The system will always have lots of points in it that are dependent on other points within that same system, and that’s why when you have a storm hit one hub, another place, even with the sun shining in a blue sky, might find that they’re experiencing weather delays related to that. We get that that’ll happen. What happened a year ago is a good example. The entire system got knocked back on its feet by an epic winter storm, but then the entire system got back on its feet except one airline which spiraled into worse and worse conditions.

(23:17)
It’s one of the reasons why we viewed that as a control… even though it started with weather, we ultimately viewed it as controllable. In other words, the airline’s responsibility, because we saw the other airlines bounce back. So it’s the resilience that we’re working on. Yes, there will be curveballs: weather or other events. One thing we’re watching right now is the volcanic eruption in Iceland, which could affect international routes. Nobody can prevent that. But is your airline and is the system as a whole resilient enough that it can absorb that reorient and get back on its feet? That’s what we’re looking for. It has shown significant signs of improvement in 2023. Obviously another test of that will be the results we get through Christmas and New Year’s coming up right now.

I wanted to ask about the unrealistic speculation [inaudible 00:24:07] that you’re applying what you’re doing now as part of the settlement for Southwest. What have you learned over the last year, because there were also concerns over the [inaudible 00:24:17].

Yeah.

So they’re scheduling [inaudible 00:24:18]. What have learned back to the [inaudible 00:24:27]?

My sense is that the industry is aware that we are watching this much more closely than in the past. I would say in the course of this investigation, it’s helped the department further develop our capabilities to monitor and enforce on unrealistic scheduling, which, among other things, is a problem obviously from a customer service standpoint, also from a competition policy standpoint. Because knowingly, unrealistic scheduling can be a method of unfair competition. As you noted, it was not part of the finding in this investigation. These penalties hang on, customer service failures, notification failures, and refund and reimbursement failures, but we continue to have active investigations in other cases related to unrealistic scheduling. That’s about as much as I can say on it for now.

[inaudible 00:25:14] over here.

[inaudible 00:25:15] concern over here. I have a question for [inaudible 00:25:17].

Yeah, I got you.

I’ll start with you Secretary Buttigieg. I don’t think it’s any secret that ever major US carrier has had at least one operational meltdown on either [inaudible 00:25:31] this year as well. Are you talking with airlines closely [inaudible 00:25:36] something similar to Thanksgiving or [inaudible 00:25:43] number of flights in Thanksgiving [inaudible 00:25:45] numbers online sometimes. Do you have an actual number of staff [inaudible 00:25:55] right now, and what does a fully staffed ATC look like, given that the number of flights is [inaudible 00:26:05]?

Thanks. For my piece, my sense from the industry is that they are expecting this robust demand, even record demand to continue. Whenever I speak to an airline CEO, they tell me about all of the steps that they say they’re taking to meet that demand, but the proof really is in the results, and that’s what we look for ultimately. And I will say the results across 2023 so far have been encouraging. A very different summer holiday season from what we saw a year prior, where there were blue sky cancellations, and a very healthy Thanksgiving.

(26:38)
We can’t make guarantees on behalf of the airline industry for how Christmas and New Year’s will go, but I will say there’s been a lot of improvement and that’s exactly what I expect, especially because, again, if they don’t do the right thing for passengers, we’re going to be here on the back end. I’ll let Mike speak to it. He could probably speak to that as well as to your question on controllers.

Thank you. The airlines actually are in constant communication with us through the command center, and they’re embedded in the command center. We have a sort of a daily dialogue, actually an hourly dialogue during difficult times. There’s very close coordination between airlines and FAA on delays and implications of weather.

(27:15)
For the controllers, we currently have just under 11,000 certified controllers. I think the number is 10,700. There are different views on what the number should be, but it needs to be a lot higher than it is, and we know that if we hire as aggressively as possible over the next three years, that should put us much closer to where we need to be. I think you often hear 3,000 more controllers, but I think it’s less important what the target number is than it is to just hire as many as we can get over the next three years, and that’s what we’re focused on.

Do you have a number in mind [inaudible 00:27:47]?

No. What we plan to do is hire as many as we can over the next three years, and then work with the Transportation Research Board to look at the various models to make sure we’re getting the best inputs and have a reliable model that we all agree on for what the staffing level ought to be.

[inaudible 00:28:05].

[foreign language 00:28:07]. Just on the last bit, I want to say one number I should put out there is the president’s budget requests our resources to hire 1800, but that’ll only happen if Congress comes through. So, another connection to the other building. In Español…

[foreign language 00:28:22]

[foreign language 00:28:31]

[inaudible 00:29:33] one more [inaudible 00:29:34].

All right.

There’s so many [inaudible 00:29:38].

I would say we know that weather is coming our way. It’s why you want to make sure that you’re keeping in touch with your airline. The big thing that we can control though, that airlines need to control is how resilient the system is to that weather. Look, the reality is every winter presents storms. We’re also living in a time when storms are getting more frequent and more severe. They just are. That’s reality. But how we respond to that and how airlines respond, that’s their job. What Southwest demonstrated is there is a tipping point where we go from an act of God to the airline’s own readiness, and that tipping point is where we hold them accountable. Does that make sense?

[inaudible 00:30:24]. Is that [inaudible 00:30:24] on account of the airlines [inaudible 00:30:32].

Look, there’s a big difference between a delay and a cancellation, and I think that the cancellations are what have caused the most distress, but the delays are a real problem as well. Now, so far, this year, on the cancellation front, we’re at 1.2%. Below two is what I would consider healthy. Closer to one, if we can keep it that way, that’s encouraging. That does invite us to pay more attention to the issue of delays and to press the airlines on how they’re behaving.

(30:58)
I think some of the rules we have underway will adjust the incentives to help mitigate delays. We know we’ve got our part to do on the ATC side, which is why we’re urging Congress to help us out with that. Look, if you look at the trend line back, the last 30, 35 years, you’ll see it tends to hover relatively consistently somewhere in the high 70s to low 80s in terms of on-time performance. I want to see us closer to 80, and we’re not there yet.

Thanks. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, everybody. All right. Good job.

Thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Nice Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish, but it sounded good.

As long as it sounds good.