ICYMI: U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Joins Meet the Press
You can watch the full interview by clicking here.
You can find a full transcript below:
KRISTEN WELKER: Joining me now is the Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. Secretary Duffy, welcome back to Meet the Press.
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: Thank you so much. Good to be with you. Thanks for having me.
KRISTEN WELKER: It is wonderful to have you here in person. I have to start with the latest out of Newark Airport, where air traffic controllers had another brief radio and radar outage. This happened early Friday morning. This is, of course, on top of losing contact with pilots multiple times since August. Mr. Secretary, what can you tell us about this latest incident, and why does this keep happening?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So, I'll tell you – listen, the system is old, right? This is a system that's what — 25 at best, sometimes 50 years old. The – the Congress and the country haven't paid attention to it, right? They expect it to work. And so now I think the – the lights are blinking, the sirens are turning, and they're saying, “Listen, we have to fix this,” because what you see in Newark is going to happen in other – in other places across the country. It has to be fixed, and so what we're having is some telecom issues, but we're also having some glitches in our software. As the information comes in, it’s overloading some of our lines, and the system goes down. So I'll just tell you specifically in Newark, we believe we're going to have it up and running in short order. We're going to be able to fix that glitch. And we feel a little more comfortable about our primary line that gets the data in, on – on – on radar, and our redundant line is up and working as well.
KRISTEN WELKER: Big picture, Mr. Secretary, is it safe to fly in and out of Newark airport right now?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: It is. So that's — I fly out of Newark all the time. My family flies out of Newark. And just when – when – when we saw these two incidents, when – when we have issues, there are policies and procedures in place for controllers and for pilots. They know what to do. It is not ideal, by any stretch, but they – they do implement those procedures, and they stay away from each other, and they – and we vacate the airspace. And, again, we have to fix it, though. This is – this is an American issue, and – and it's going to be an American congressional priority, I think, in this coming year, to get us the money to – to do the three or four-year build that it's going to take to get this completed.
KRISTEN WELKER: And I want to talk about the overhaul that you –
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: Yeah.
KRISTEN WELKER: – have announced this week. But before we get there, do you need to scale back flights coming in and out of Newark while you are addressing these glitches, these problems that are so potentially dangerous?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: One hundred percent. So we actually have brought down the number of airplanes that come in and leave Newark because, listen, our mission is safety. And so – yeah, I hate delays. I hate cancellations. And I hate families who come with little kids that are sitting there for four hours. I've done that myself on occasion. It's hard. But I want you to get to where you're traveling. And if that means slowing down flights into Newark, we slow them down to make sure we can do it safely. We lost a few controllers who were stressed out by the first connectivity that we lost last week. And so we have less controllers working the Newark airspace right now. And, you know, we're having these – these glitches in the system. So we slow it down and keep people safe. That's what we do.
KRISTEN WELKER: How long will these delays and these cancellations last? As you say, this is incredibly challenging for families, particularly as we are approaching the summer travel season.
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So what we want is we – we want to have a number of flights that if you – if you book your flight, you know it's going to fly, right? That’s – that is the priority. So you don't get to the airport, wait four hours, and then – and then get delayed. So I think, you know, we’re going to have – you know, in the next several weeks we're going to have this reduced capacity at Newark. I'm convening a meeting of all the airlines that serve Newark, get them to agree on how they're going to reduce the capacity, so you book, you fly. We are building a new line that goes directly from Newark to the Philly TRACON, which controls the New York airspace. What happens now is it goes from Newark to N90, which is where it used to be controlled, and then down to Philly. That doesn't make sense. We're going to have a direct line there.
KRISTEN WELKER: When will that be completed?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So, listen, it's – it’s a long distance, so we think by the end of the summer it should be completed.
KRISTEN WELKER: And when you say you are going to decrease the number of flights, do you have a percentage? 10%? 20%?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So for the percent, I don't – I don’t know. It's going to fluctuate too, so in the – in the morning, in early afternoon, we're going to have more capacity. As those international flights come in in the afternoon, we slow it down a little bit more.
KRISTEN WELKER: And you talked about the fact that this might not be confined to Newark. Are there other airports that you are concerned about right now, Mr. Secretary?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: No, I’m controlled about the – I'm concerned about the whole airspace, right? The equipment that we use, much of it we can't buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And so this is – this is concerning. Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly. But we should also recognize we're seeing – we’re seeing stress on an old network, and it's time to fix it.
KRISTEN WELKER: Bottom line, is it safe to fly in the United States right now?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: We are – listen, we are the safest airspace, for sure, and traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation, which is why I take it, my family takes it. But again, that doesn't mean you don't look over the horizon and say, "Hey, if there — if there is a major outage, could that be a risk to life?" Of course it could be, which is why we fix it, which is why – you know, listen. This is what I think, is someone should have seen that there were 80 near misses at the DCA airspace, right? Someone should have seen it and stopped that cross traffic. I need to look and say, "Well, what is the other risks that exist in the airspace?" And I should see it, and I should fix it. And that's what I'm doing here. Before you lose life, I want to fix it so we preserve life and – and underscore safety.
KRISTEN WELKER: Since you bring up DCA, Reagan National Airport, I do have to ask you. There was another close call –
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: Yeah.
KRISTEN WELKER: – at Reagan National Airport with an army Black Hawk helicopter. Of course this comes after that deadly crash in January. Mr. Secretary, should all military helicopter traffic be permanently halted from Reagan?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So I wouldn't say all, I – listen, I think there are some training missions that have to fly. But should they fly, you know, when there's maximum traffic coming into – into DCA? No. The president, the vice president will fly through the space. But what I want to make sure is if someone's flying out of the Pentagon, if they're VIPs, they truly are VIPs. And I think we should know: Who are the VIPs that fly? What training missions happen? Because it's a really busy airspace, and we want to limit those helicopters in the air, especially when we're flying during the day in D.C., in one of the busiest airspaces in the country.
KRISTEN WELKER: Yeah, absolutely. So you did announce this overhaul of outdated air traffic control systems. Will anything in your plan address these immediate issues? Because your plan costs billions of dollars, needs congressional approval, and could take years to implement, right?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So the problem we have is you can't snap your fingers and fix it, right? It takes time to build the infrastructure. And it’s – I say it's going to be three to four years to build it all, but we're going to focus on Newark first, so we're going to start to see Newark be far – far more resilient in the near term. But air traffic controllers, we're 3,000 short on air traffic control. I can't snap my fingers and bring in these highly-skilled air traffic controllers. All of this is going to take time. So the key here is we have to start. We have to begin the process of fixing the system. I can't say in two weeks I can have it fixed. That's not the space that we deal with. But I'm going to tell you, we are going to begin, and, you know, in the – in the months and years ahead, we're going to see real results.
KRISTEN WELKER: You get – take me to my next question because the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers is actually 56 years old. But as you're indicating, it can take years to train an air traffic controller. Will you ask Congress to raise the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So Congress has given me the authority to extend the retirement age for air traffic controllers from – from 56 to 61. But that's not the problem.
KRISTEN WELKER: Will you do it, though, Mr. Secretary?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: Oh, a hundred percent.
KRISTEN WELKER: You're going to do it? Okay.
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: I've already told the union I'll do that. But here's the issue. So air traffic controllers, after 25 years of service, can retire. So many of them retire at 50 years old, well before that 56-year mandatory retirement. What I've done, I said, "Hey, listen. These are the best controllers we have in the airspace. Let's give them a bonus. I'm going to give them a 20% upfront bonus to stay on the job. Don't retire. Keep serving your country.” And these are the best guys. And so if we can keep more of those experienced air traffic controllers from retiring, and we're supercharging more young people into our academy – and, by the way, that’s – these are not overnight fixes. It's going to take them one to three years to get trained up. But as we go up, you know, one, two years, older guys on the job, younger guys coming in, men and women, and we can make up that 3,000-person difference.
KRISTEN WELKER: Let me ask you because as you are dealing with this crisis, Elon Musk and DOGE, as you know, have been making cuts at the FAA. And I think a lot of people are wondering, "Have these cuts made this situation worse? Have they increased the challenges and the potential safety concerns?"
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: Yeah, that's – that’s a great question. So in the safety mission of the FAA, like the air traffic controllers, no one was cut. We actually have staffed up. We've hired more air traffic controllers during this time. There were – there were probationary workers that were let go. Those are employees who were there less than a year and less – and, again, we excluded the safety positions. Most of them have come back. So, again, to say a department – the FAA has 46,000 employees. And if you lost 350, is this affecting our safety mission? There's a lot of things the FAA does. But for us, safety is key. So, no, we've retained all those safety positions.
KRISTEN WELKER: You're saying some were fired, some were brought back. People will hear that and think it sounds a little bit chaotic. I guess the bottom line is –
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: Okay, listen –
KRISTEN WELKER: – did Elon Musk ask you to cut air traffic controllers directly?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So, listen, we – we were having a conversation about, "Who do we preserve?" And, again, I wanted in those probationary employees to preserve air traffic controllers. We went back and forth, and Elon agreed, the president agreed. Of course you want to keep air traffic controllers. We're trying to hire more of them. But – but I think the key is, "Can your government be more efficient?" We've had a massive expansion of government. You can actually be more efficient and still accomplish the mission of safety, which is what I think we can do. And are – actually, we are doing that.
KRISTEN WELKER: Did – did Elon Musk, though, initially ask you to cut air traffic controllers –
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: No.
KRISTEN WELKER: – and did you dispute that?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: No.
KRISTEN WELKER: Did you have a disagreement with him about that?
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: So, Elon and I get along really well. He never called me and said, "Cut air traffic control." He would never do that. This was a broader conversation about what positions are going to be preserved, right? So if we're going to let probationary employees go, again, they’ve – they're new employees. They just were hired on. Some might have been there for a month, some of them ten months. It was the new employees that we were going to let go. Many of them have come back. But this is not the institutional knowledge of the FAA that's being let go. Elon Musk understands the importance of the airspace and the need to have good controllers. Actually, SpaceX launches through the airspace and the FAA. We want good controllers that know the airspace to navigate all the issues that come up.
KRISTEN WELKER: All right. Secretary Duffy, I know it's been a very busy week for you. Thank you so much for joining us.
SEC. SEAN DUFFY: Thank you for having me on again.