Pod Insights Decoder Flying is still safe, for now — but the FAA isn’t About this episode So today I’m talking to Andy Hawkins, The Verge’s transportation editor, about what’s going on in the skies. Andy just edited a big piece for us by writer Darryl Campbell that helps put a lot of what’s happening in air travel right now in perspective. It has some very reassuring data points, but it also raises important questions about what we need to do next to reinstill confidence in air travel.
Andy and I talked about how safe it really is to fly right now — extremely safe, it turns out — and how the current air traffic systems might change for better and worse. And, of course, we talked about Elon Musk.
Links:
What’s the deal with all these airplane crashes? | Verge
How Elon Musk muscled his way into the FAA | Bloomberg
Elon Musk says upgrade of FAA’s air traffic control system is failing | CNN
FAA targeting Verizon contract in favor of Musk’s Starlink, sources say | WashPo
FAA officials ordered staff to find funding for Elon Musk’s Starlink | Rolling Stone
FAA announces ‘hiring supercharge’ for air traffic controllers | Forbes
Air traffic control trainees to get raise, in nod to cost of living | NYT
Some of the 400 jobs that were cut at the FAA helped support air safety | AP
DC plane crash marks first major commercial crash in US since 2009 | ABC
What the ATC controller sees | Flight Training Central
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Real innovation is powered by real people. This is AMEX Corporate. Trusted experts, smarter technology, 24/7 dedicated support from day one to answer questions, help set up policies and approvals, and consult on spend capacity as your business needs evolve. Plus, on-demand resources help level up operations at every stage. That's the trusted service you've come to expect. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is AMEX Corporate.
0:33 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. So I was on a flight back home to New York the other day, and something really odd happened when we landed. The passengers all burst into applause. Now, I've seen this happen before, but only really on flights where there's been really bad turbulence or a big delay. But this was a totally boring flight that took off and landed on time with no drama whatsoever. So why the clapping? Well, you know why. There have been a lot of plane crashes, or near crashes lately, and it's all against the backdrop of the Trump administration and Elon Musk firing FAA employees and talking about upgrading with Starlink, or whatever they're tweeting about today.
1:15 Speaker 01 Just this week, there are reports that have detailed exactly how Elon has wedged his way into the FAA to force SpaceX into the conversation, including a move to take over an existing Verizon contract and even threatening FAA employees with termination if they don't get on board. So the reason it feels less safe to fly, the reason people are clapping when the planes land, isn't just the tragic accidents. It's that the system we took for granted to keep us safe and solve problems when they do occur is being destabilized right in front of our eyes. And actually improving that system, which I think we'd all like to do, takes more than posts on social media, or bravado, or conflicts of interest so intense that they cause a constitutional crisis.
1:58 Speaker 01 It's actually going to be a complicated dance of people, technology, and policy. You know, Decoder stuff. So today, I'm talking to Andy Hawkins, The Verge's transportation editor, about what's going on in the skies. Andy just edited a big piece for us by writer Darryl Campbell that helps put a lot of what's going on in air travel into perspective. There's some very reassuring data about how safe it is to actually fly, but there are also some big questions about what we need to do next in order to regain our confidence in air travel. Andy and I talked about how safe it really is to fly right now, extremely safe, and how the current air traffic systems we have might change for better and for worse. And of course, we talked about Elon Musk. Okay, air travel and the future of the FAA. Here we go.
2:57 Speaker 01 Andy Hawkins, welcome to Decoder.
2:58 Speaker 02 Hello. Thanks for having me.
2:59 Speaker 01 We're not going to talk about Tesla today, which is usually why you're here, but we are going to talk about Elon Musk.
3:05 Speaker 02 Ah, damn it.
3:06 Speaker 01 So a real bait and switch. Sorry, buddy.
3:08 Speaker 02 It's all right. I'm used to it.
3:10 Speaker 01 Let's talk about plane crashes. I was just on a flight back to New York, and it landed, and the whole plane burst into applause. I've been on a lot of flights into New York. Usually when you land at JFK, it is absolute complacency, right? People are just trying to get off that plane. That is, a lot of business travelers headed back home who are used to the plane landing. And this one burst into applause.
3:33 Speaker 02 It's amazing.
3:34 Speaker 01 That, to me, was just a sign that something has changed. Our perception of air travel has changed. There have been a number of incidents, a number of crashes, a deadly crash in Washington DC. We just wrote a piece, kind of laying this all out. You were the editor of that piece. The title was, "What's the Deal with All These Airplane Crashes?" by Derek Campbell. What is going on here?
3:54 Speaker 02 I think there's two kind of seemingly contradictory things that this piece that Daryl did a really good job, I think, of tackling, which is that, yes, there have been a number of very high-profile and extremely tragic plane crashes over the last few months. Most notably, there was the midair collision over the Potomac between a regional flight and American Airlines and a helicopter that resulted in 67 people being killed. But then on top of that, there was this flight in South Korea that resulted in several deaths. Then we had the plane that flipped over upside down in Toronto, which was extremely worrisome. So you've had all of these incidents happening, right?
4:35 Speaker 02 That has led to sort of the growing perception, I would say, that air travel is somehow less safe. And that is also, I think, been building over the years, because we've had all of the Boeing incidents. There have been the Boeing Max crashes several years ago. And I do think that this is sort of leading to this growing perception. That air travel somehow is less safe, but it's actually quite the opposite. Air travel is actually safer than it's ever been. If you sort of look over many decades, there is actually less risk in flying than there really ever has been. And there was a really interesting study to come out last year that found, and this was sort of the statistic that really leapt out to me, which was that there's one fatality
5:18 Speaker 02 in commercial air travel per 13.7 million passengers with boarding passes. So for every 13.7 million passengers who are holding boarding passes to get on a plane and fly somewhere, one of those people dies. And that is a huge, huge improvement over, this was, I'm sorry, this is between 2018 and 2022. That's a huge improvement over between 2008 and 2017, which found that there was one per 7.9 million boardings resulted in a fatality. And that is a huge improvement over 1968 to 1977, which found that one per 350,000 boardings resulted in a fatality. So if you think about that, you think about only one person dying per 13.7 million passengers
6:02 Speaker 02 boarding a plane over the last few years, it really kind of puts a lot of this, I think, chaos that we've seen into perspective.
6:10 Speaker 01 All right, let me challenge you on that. I realize this isn't your study, but I'm going to push you on this.
6:16 Speaker 02 Yes, please.
6:16 Speaker 01 Because I, I think I have the intuitive reaction to those numbers that a lot of people do, which is, yeah, but all the people die at once.
6:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:27 Speaker 01 Right? So you can, you can change the numerator and denominator, you can say statistically, you are not the, the one in 13 million person that is unlikely. But I'm opening my phone and I'm looking at the news and there were two close calls within 90 minutes of each other. And that doesn't happen a lot. Or a helicopter hit a plane and everyone died and that is a tragedy. We just don't hear about that a lot. And really what that number is saying is, There are this many really bad incidents per time, not one out of 13 million, something that happens. There's a move there in the statistics that lets you look at aggregate safety. And then there's the perception, which is, boy, it seems like the rate of
7:10 Speaker 01 chaos is increasing. Whether or not statistically, it's safer because more and more people are flying.
7:15 Speaker 02 I certainly don't mean to diminish the impact that these crashes have had, the fatalities that have occurred. And it is certainly the case that the midair collision in DC, but then also you had plane crashes that resulted in fatalities in Philadelphia and in Alaska recently. And it is true that these are, taken in aggregate, represent the biggest plane disasters that we've had in this country in decades, I think since like 2009 or something like that. So yes, that is the case, that if you look at those crashes, they are significant because they have resulted in so many deaths at once. But that said, that said, that's what happens when you look at things in a small observable period of time, as opposed
7:59 Speaker 02 to when most people assess risk, it's over the long term, right? So you're looking at years, you're looking at decades. Darryl Campbell, who wrote this article for us, which I really encourage everyone to go read, it's a really fantastic piece. It lays out sort of everything that you might be thinking about air travel right now. And he talked to a statistician who said, you know, when we talk about this stuff, that we do have to think about the observed rate, and that these things are not going to be happening equally spaced out, right? There's when there are fatalities and there are these incidents, they don't happen an equally spaced out period of time between each other. Sometimes they happen in clusters. So I think that that's what's happening right now, that there are these incidents that have happened, they're all sort of clustered together. And given what sort of like the general public understands about air travel, which is not that much,
8:44 Speaker 02 it's not great. And how they weigh risk, I think that that's why you're seeing people thinking, you know, saying to themselves, wow, maybe this is not, you know, maybe air travel is less safe than I thought it was, and maybe I shouldn't be risking taking this flight that I have to take.
8:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's the clustering that I think is interesting, because the other framework that I've been using to try to understand it is, we built a system, it was very safe, it was running, it's old, it has been criticized pretty ferociously by pilots, by air traffic controllers, by the Air Traffic Controllers Union, by all kinds of people. And then we've added more volume to that system. Right? There are more flights, there are more travelers, the prices on one measure are getting cheaper, although Spirit will just add fees to make the prices equalize in the end, and that's fine. But you can see, like, there's an economy of air travel that is premised on the fact that the system works and keeps everyone safe, and then we can add more volume to it, we can add more
9:37 Speaker 01 features to it. And it seems like that system might have just hit its breaking point on its own, or Elon Musk is actively tearing that system down.
9:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's so many contradictions involved in this, right? That there's the statistics that I quoted that show that the rate of improvement has been enormous, and that air travel is more safe than it ever has been. It is also equally true that it is all sort of built on top of a system that is incredibly brittle and fragile, and that we've seen over the years how a decrease in funding from Congress, and how layoffs and attrition in the COVID-19 pandemic, and all of these things have sort of had a compounding effect, that now we're being left with an air traffic control system in which, I think there was a study that came out last year, that showed that 90% of the 313 air traffic control facilities that operate in this country are below recommended staffing
10:32 Speaker 02 levels. So it's clear that flying is safer than it ever has been, but there is a growing concern about how sustainable that is, when the system on which it's built appears to be growing through a crisis now, and it's a question of like, how much can the present crisis of the Trump administration and Elon Musk and Doge and layoffs will have a compounding effect on that? Because they've already laid off around 400 people from the FAA. There was some debate about how safety critical these roles were. The Trump administration said that they were probationary employees, and we've seen across the government now that that's, those are the people that are typically being targeted. Most of these agencies are the people who were just hired because they're a lot easier to fire, they don't have-
11:17 Speaker 02 The same level of protections for them. And that none of them were air traffic controllers. But the union that represents a lot of these workers say that, you know, that these were maintenance people. These were people that were on the ground maintaining safety systems. Maybe they weren't up in the towers necessarily, but they still were responsible for a lot of the safety that goes on in our nation's airports. So I think that there is a sense that, yes, we have this incredibly safe system, but the system that it's built on is extremely fragile and it's a question of how well it can tolerate the stress testing that Elon Musk and Doge is going to continue to put it through.
11:52 Speaker 01 We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
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12:12 Speaker 04 I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.
12:20 Speaker 03 Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
12:36 Speaker 01 We're back with Verge Transportation Editor Andy Hawkins discussing the state of air travel in the United States and the level of stress our safety and oversight systems are currently undergoing because a lot of very complex things are happening all at once. What I wanted to know is how new these problems are and whether President Biden and his Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have been addressing these issues over the past four years. I also wanted to know what, if anything, has meaningfully changed since Trump took office. But most importantly, I wanted to know what it means that Trump and Elon Musk are putting more pressure on all parts of the system right after some of the worst commercial airplane crashes in decades.
13:14 Speaker 01 One of the ways that I find it easiest to understand a change is by understanding the initial state and then figuring out what's changed. You've talked to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg many times over the past few years. Was he trying to fix it? Was the Biden administration trying to fix it? Was Pete personally keeping the planes in the air? What was the, they knew it was a problem. I don't want to sugarcoat it. The Biden administration had a problem. People were talking about it and now there's change, but I'm trying to understand where we were at before the Elon circus came to town.
13:44 Speaker 02 Those were some of my favorite memes that I've seen was that Pete was personally keeping the planes in the air. And the other, the other joke was that DEI was actually keeping the planes up, up, up a lot. And that, you know, as soon as you take that away, now we're starting to see what happens. But no, I think, I do think that during the Biden administration, they were fully aware of the problem. And you saw Pete Buttigieg really attempt to tackle it by incentivizing the hiring of more ATC workers. That is an extremely long process that will not see fruition until probably well into the Trump administration. If there were attempting to train and hire more ATC workers. But I do think that also that under Buttigieg, the US DOT was really more focused on like the consumer experience of flying,
14:27 Speaker 02 which was also fairly terrible in the aftermath of the pandemic. I mean, you were seeing hundreds of flights being canceled. There was the huge Southwest Airlines meltdown. What he really was prioritizing was making sure that people were getting compensated for canceled flights and had some sort of way to secret dress with the airlines when, when these meltdowns occurred. And maybe he didn't quite see the level of crisis that was going on at, at the ATC. He might argue with that, but I do think that, you know, given how long it takes to hire and train new ATC workers, if they were engaged in the process of trying to restaff and build up staff, that's a congressional problem too. Because as we've seen with Congress, there's, you know, there's always fights going on over this funding and who gets the, the say over what budget.
15:12 Speaker 02 And I do know that, that Congress has been accused of defunding the FAA over these last several decades, which is also a huge problem as well.
15:19 Speaker 01 I just keep coming back to this idea that you only get to do those things if you take the safety and reliability of the underlying system for granted. You only get to financialize Boeing. And then have a bad safety record if Boeing thinks that the planes will just be fine. And then you can have CEOs who barely care about the engineering, which is the heart of the Boeing problem. You only get to care about, you know, Pete personally doing customer support for canceled tickets on Twitter if you believe the underlying system is fine.
15:47 Speaker 02 And that I think that's something that is gonna really come to head over the next four years of Trump, which is that, you know, one of the major themes are not major themes, but it certainly came out in the project 2025 document, which, which was, and this is something that Republicans have been trying to do for years now, which is privatizing air traffic control. They've been trying to remove this as a responsibility from the government, give it to private companies. There's other countries around the world that have privatized ATC systems, you know, the UK and Canada. And we've seen some positive and negative effects from that. But I think, you know, it begs the question, you know, given the safety improvements that we have seen over the decades, why this impulse to privatize a system that has achieved a level of, of safety improvements that is
16:32 Speaker 02 really just like not seen in like any other safety system that's out there. So I do think that that's a, that's going to be a real fierce debate that we're going to see sort of unfold over the next few years.
16:43 Speaker 01 So Pete's solution was we should hire more people, right? The crisis is in the staffing levels. The staffing levels, as you said, 90% of facilities were below recommended levels. So we just add people to the mix. The other solution, and I would say this is the Elon Musk solution, is you got to rebuild the computer systems that are being used for air traffic control. Trump has said it. Trump is, you know, in classic Trump way has imagined, I think he calls it like a beautiful 3D system. I don't know what that means.
17:12 Speaker 02 Sounds great.
17:13 Speaker 01 It sounds amazing.
17:14 Speaker 02 Very reliable.
17:15 Speaker 01 Whatever that is, right? But it is true that our current system is fairly archaic. If you look at, you can, we'll put some links in the show notes, you can look at pictures of what air traffic controls are actually looking at. This is a fairly archaic outdated system. We're just good at running it. And maybe the problem is we're understaffing the archaic system. Then there's the other.
17:37 Speaker 01 Version of this, which is the system is archaic. Maybe you need less people if you just built a better, more modern system. Is that what you perceive Elon to be doing with Doge?
17:48 Speaker 02 It's unclear because Doge is extremely opaque and they don't really, and a lot of the information that they do publicize tends to be wrong, it seems like in these, these past few weeks. So we asked to sort of take, you know, Musk in his, in his X feed and at face value, which is that, you know, he's had a lot of problems with the FAA in the past, and it's mostly been around the regulation of his company SpaceX. We saw late last year that he was sort of, he engaged in a harassment campaign against Michael Whitaker, who was the former administrator at the FAA, saying that the, you know, FAA was unfairly targeting SpaceX for safety violations and launch violations. And basically was successful in getting Whitaker to resign the day of Trump's inauguration. He didn't have to, he could
18:33 Speaker 02 have stayed in that role, but just, I guess, decided it wasn't worth the grief. More recently, we've seen Musk zero in on this contract that the FAA had with Verizon, a $2.4 billion contract to update the communication systems. And now we're starting, you know, to, there's questions that are being raised because we're seeing reporting from the Washington Post and from Rolling Stone and from some other outlets about how the FAA is now trying to take that contract away from Verizon and give it to Starlink, which is a subsidiary of SpaceX. So there is a sense, I think, that there's maybe some double dealing going on here, a potentially immense conflict of interest in, in terms of, you know, how much say Musk is having over this process and in what ways is this going to benefit
19:15 Speaker 02 SpaceX? The FAA brought in a team from, from SpaceX to try to see where, places in which it could get some efficiencies out of its system, improve its, its technology. Because as you, as you noted, yes, we're dealing with the system that, you know, they're, they're still using rotary phones and extremely out of date obsolete technology. And, you know, I, I do think it's, it is imperative for the, for the FAA to figure out a way to, to update that. But it does have to go through sort of the normal channels. And it seems like, at least from what Rolling Stone suggests, that this is some of This is going on outside normal channels. They're not writing any of this down. It seems like it's all being communicated verbally in terms of trying to replace the Verizon contract with Starlink. So that's definitely raised a lot of concerns.
19:59 Speaker 02 It's unclear with the motivation. Is the motivation to improve the FAA and replace this outdated system? Or is it just to enrich Elon Musk's company?
20:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're being very polite in saying it raises conflict of interest concern like I will just say that appears to be outright corruption. I will also say Verizon is not short on lobbyists in DC.
20:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:20 Speaker 01 And the our nation's government is not short on well-funded dinners paid for by telecom lobbyists.
20:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, but their lobbyists are not embedded in the government right now, right?
20:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is a purest test. If you've built that ecosystem.
20:38 Speaker 01 Right? That's a lot of steak dinners that are going to go away if they lose this contract. Like a lot of people have incentives to fix it. But this is the, I think, the heart of the chaos, I think, because you have Elon saying, okay, got to move this contract over to Starlink. I have some FAA report, which no one has seen or has been released where he claims that it's single-digit months until this whole system fails. Which would be a like national emergency. If we were actually single-digit months away from all of air traffic control failing. I feel like double-digit months ago, we should have been talking about it. But that's what Elon claims, and that's why he's got to move with urgency to put Starlink in instead of the system Verizon was supposed to deploy soon.
21:22 Speaker 01 And then there's Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation and under Trump, saying he's got a supercharged air traffic controller hiring. And those feel like we're running in two different directions. Right? Where we need to staff the old system with as many people as we can, which takes a long time. They have to be trained. We have to find the people to do the work. It's stressful job. And then we're also at the same time undoing the foundation that they would work upon. And bringing in whatever new Starlink system or SpaceX system is going to operate it. And I'm just not sure if those are the same idea, or if everyone's just saying stuff to make people calm down.
22:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, in some ways, it seems like they were kind of caught in a bind, right? Like, you say what you will about the Trump administration, they do sometimes react when they make a bad decision, and then the reaction is predictable. They get called out for making a bad decision, and then they have to sort of pivot and figure out sort of a new tactic. Because I think with the FAA, in particular, you know, with these cuts coming, you know, just like a week after this horrific crash in DC, the optics were horrible, right? That you're firing 400 people from the FAA weeks after this terrible fatal crash, the first that we've had in several decades, just looks like you're messing this whole thing up. So I think that they haven't really had to
22:45 Speaker 02 confront that same level of scrutiny in the same way at all of the other agencies that they've been slashing and burning through their way through. So I do think that this supercharged effort is in response to how horrible the optics were from them firing 400 people from the FAA right after this crash occurred. I also do think it addresses a real issue going on right now with staff shortages and the length of time that it takes to onboard new ATC workers. So it can be both, right? It can be both like an attempt to clean up a mess that you made for yourself, but also one that addresses a very serious issue that will hopefully result in improving staffing levels and getting more people hired at the ATC. I think it's notable, right? That they're trying to decimate the federal
23:29 Speaker 02 bureaucracy, but they do realize that this is sort of the one place where they really can't do that.
23:33 Speaker 01 The Verizon contract that it appears SpaceX wants for itself, that is a contract to provide communication services between the towers. Verizon's pretty good at communication services. Is there something else there that Starlink can do better? Does anyone know?
23:51 Speaker 02 I mean, that's the problem, right? Is that this is all going on behind closed doors, and we're only hearing about it through unnamed sources. There's a bidding process in which this is supposed to go through, right? And Verizon went through that bidding process. It submitted its pitch for this contract. The FAA considered other possibilities, and then ultimately, they decided to award it to Verizon based on the cost analysis and what
24:13 Speaker 01 Steak dinners, Andy. It was based on steak dinners. I don't, I don't, I'm not, this is, we're not telecom lobbyists or not like a friendly subject at The Verge. But yeah, sure, there was a process.
24:26 Speaker 02 There was a process.
24:27 Speaker 01 There was a little grease in the wheels.
24:29 Speaker 02 But that is the thing, right? The Rolling Stone report especially is that all this is being communicated verbally, which is, you know, sources have told the magazine this is extremely unusual and they, it seems like it's very clear that they don't want a paper trail associated with it. They don't want something that can be subpoenaed or FOIA'd or whatever it is after the fact. And it doesn't seem as if Congress has any interest in it. I mean, I've heard a lot of Democrats shouting and screaming about it, but the party that's actually in power, the Republicans, have the power to haul Sean Duffy or whomever it is at the FAA in front of, in front of a panel and ask them about this. And I haven't heard anybody say a whisper about any of this yet.
25:08 Speaker 01 We need to take another quick break. We'll be right back.
25:18 Speaker 03 Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them? That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.
25:28 Speaker 04 I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it, it wasn't.
25:36 Speaker 03 Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
25:52 Speaker 01 We're back with Verge Transportation Editor Andy Hawkins. Before the break, we were discussing Elon Musk's plan to have SpaceX assume more responsibility for the air traffic control system here in the United States, including a takeover of a communications contract Verizon already bid on and won. We don't have to dance around this. All of that is extremely corrupt, like the definition of corruption and conflict of interest. It's also, as Andy pointed out, very unclear whether the goal is to improve safety and avoid a catastrophic system failure, which Elon is now claiming is imminent, or whether it's simply to capture a lucrative government contract for SpaceX. But look past the current chaos and you'll see it's just the start of what feels like an even bigger fight. A debate about whether the government of the United States should run air traffic control
26:34 Speaker 01 at all, or whether it should be privatized. Different countries around the world have different approaches to air traffic control, including privatized systems. And it feels like that's the biggest price SpaceX could take.
26:47 Speaker 01 Underneath all this confusion is the big idea that you've alluded to several times now, that maybe we shouldn't run a giant national air traffic control system. We should let airports, municipalities, maybe airlines themselves privatize the system and run it themselves. There are some other countries that do that. Notably, they are much smaller than the United States, which I think makes this easier. Is that a good idea? Is that, is that something that's been rigorously analyzed over the past several decades? Or is it, well, the UK does it, so we should just do it here and no one's thought past that?
27:20 Speaker 02 I do think it has been analyzed and debated. I'm not sure whether or not, you know, the lengths to which that debate has, I think, spilled over to the public. I think a lot of it is still happening in, you know, like, white papers and think tanks and things like that. But I do think eventually it's going to reach, you know, like, the op-ed pages of all the newspapers for, you know, to the lengths that anybody actually reads those anymore. But we'll see it on the news, right? Especially if Trump and the Republicans really try to push this. And I do think, like I said before, it begs the question, like, what are we hoping to gain out of this? We have these enormous improvements in safety over the last several decades that the government-run ATC program can point to and say, this is something that we've achieved. And then I think that there's questions to be, to be
28:05 Speaker 02 raised about safety systems at private companies like Boeing, right? So Boeing has had an enormous amount of problems over the last few years that I think directly link to the company's profit-seeking business in terms of using cheaper parts when it came to the door plug that blew out of the Alaska Airlines plane, or the cheaper software that they went with to run on the Boeing MAX planes, that two of which crashed and killed, killed everybody on board. I hope that when this debate takes off, that, you know, serious people on both sides can ask themselves, like, what are we trying to gain out of this? And what could we potentially lose? Especially when it comes to these safety improvements that we've seen, these gains over the last several decades, which, you know, are fantastic, but they
28:48 Speaker 02 don't just go up. They could seriously start to fall back if there are serious changes. Because, you know, all of this is being run every day, millions of flights taking place every day. When you swap out a communication system, or you suddenly you, you change the whole governance of how the system works and it's privatized, that's something that I don't know if I potentially want to risk have happen.
29:10 Speaker 01 In the abstract, the argument for privatizing any system is that you'll have a bunch of vendors come in and compete. And if one fails, you can fire them and a new vendor will show up. And that competition will keep everyone working really hard. And they have built in incentives to improve their systems because they are in competition. I think with the Boeing example, they had no competition, right? Like Boeing became effectively the United States a national champion of building planes. And then they started trying to increase their margin by cheaping out on parts and cheaping out of engineering and offloading engineering of entire components of the planes. So you have this tension, right? You have a vibrant market, and maybe that market will provide better services because there's competition. And
29:54 Speaker 01 then if competition dwindles, you get weird monopoly, margin profit-seeking behavior. Is there a market for air traffic control services in the States? Like, it seems like if that's the theory, and in many cases, the theory is proven correct, right? There is a market for laptop computers that we cover vigorously here at The Verge, and the laptops keep getting better. And it never occurs to me to think, well, the government should start making laptops. But I don't even know that there's a market for air traffic control services. Like, who provides them in other countries? Would they want to come here? If it takes this long to train air traffic controllers at the FAA, where are all those companies going to hire people from?
30:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think like the model that they would probably choose to follow would be either from the Canadian model, which in which a private nonprofit, NAV Canada, controls the Canadian airspace. There is something to be said for like bringing in the private sector to help modernize a system that is moribund and relying on obsolete technology. And public-private partnerships aren't necessarily a bad thing. But I do think that, you know, we have to like look at some of these other systems in other countries and ask whether or not they have achieved the same safety gains that we have, or if they have modernized their systems. And I do think that, you know, in the UK and Canada, they have modernized their systems. They've done that. They've undertaken that effort over the last decades and now their systems are running
31:15 Speaker 02 pretty safely. But there are also, there's downsides. I think there was a report that came out in 2018 about the UK's privatized ATC provider, which is the NATS, which found that the airspace structures have not changed significantly over the last 50 years and have not really grown to accommodate the forecasted growth in air traffic and airport infrastructure. They're dealing with a lot of delays, right? So they're having some of the same problems that we are, but with a privatized system. So it's not exactly clear to me that it's like so cut and dry. You switch over to a private system and suddenly all of your problems go away.
31:50 Speaker 01 Is it as simple as maybe we just automate all of this? Because that feels like the the next Elon move, right? Is to say, well, look, you know, there was the deadly crash in DC, the initial reporting that we've heard is, you know, maybe some human beings piloting those planes didn't hear some commands or they got lost in the radio chatter.
32:10 Speaker 02 There was also the staff shortage. I think there was a person that was maintaining both the like the commercial air traffic and also the helicopter traffic at the same time. Or there was somebody that was pulling like double duty essentially in the in the in the tower when they there should have been more people there. I think that it's the opposite, right? It's not automating more of it. It's just hiring more people. We have people that can do these jobs. We should pay them the money that it requires, pay them a decent wage, which is why, you know, I'm like somewhat encouraged by the the supercharge process that Duffy announced, right? They're going to be upping people's salaries, paying them more, like 30% more salaries, and also removing some of the steps in the hiring process to get them on board faster. So I do think that if you're going to be engaging in that process, it doesn't seem like they're trending towards automation.
32:55 Speaker 02 They actually agree and see the the advantages to a human run system. And I think that that's encouraging.
33:01 Speaker 01 I'm just saying the Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse for fear and it will not stop.
33:07 Speaker 02 You want to ask ChatGPT whether or not the plane, the plane can land now?
33:11 Speaker 01 I mean, if the goal of safety improvement is, isn't some amount of automation just inherent to the process to say, okay, there are fallible people, maybe someone's sick that day, or maybe someone wasn't paying attention, or? Maybe someone just had a bad day and you should actually very much enhance the capability of the people with automated systems.
33:30 Speaker 02 You want Grok to run our ATC system? That's fine. I will never fly again, but I wish you the best of luck.
33:37 Speaker 01 Is that what other countries are doing? Is that, I mean, is that part of modernizing the system? Because it does feel like if you're, if you have an Elon Musk in the situation, maybe he does want to hand it over to Grok. But in particular, what he will look at is what can computers do here that hiring people or needing to pay people their rates can't do?
34:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it seems obvious and likely, right? That is, that is going to be a debate that happens. I think that just, you know, we need to make sure that these, because when you're dealing with safety critical systems like, like air travel, it's not about, you know, making stupid pictures of Kamala Harris pointing a gun at Donald Trump. It's about, you know, people's lives, right? And I think that that's something that a lot of the autonomous vehicle companies and the robotaxi companies have confronted right now too, right? We've seen how some of those projects seem to be going well and others have not and have resulted in people being killed. And, you know, in Tesla in particular, right? With their full self-driving system, there have been dozens of people that have lost their lives because they have relied too much on an automated system.
34:42 Speaker 02 So I do think that there, when it comes to safety critical systems and you have people's lives that are at stake, you have to be more than sure. You have to be 110 or 120% over the line in ensuring that these systems can credibly handle a system that, in which millions of people are flying every day. So I, I, I do agree that it's, it's coming and I wonder if, whether or not we are ready to have these conversations about the safety of these systems.
35:11 Speaker 01 Last question. It feels like the big picture need for change is obvious to everyone.
35:18 Speaker 01 Right. It's been obvious across administrations, across political lines. We have an antiquated system. We're running it really hot. It's producing better safety outcomes, but we need to upgrade it. We need to go do an entire budgeting process and RFP process for Verizon to get a $2.4 billion contract to upgrade our connectivity. That was, that's in the mix. It's already happening, presumably. So everyone knows that there needs to be a big change, big upgrade. And then there's the chaos of the Trump administration. And a lot of, you know, the most gracious thing that I hear people say about the Trump administration is they agree with the big goals and then the execution is not how they would do it. Right? Maybe we should fire everybody and maybe you should just do it more nicely.
36:01 Speaker 01 I've heard this. I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's what I've heard. Is this the sort of thing where we break the FAA pretty recklessly, but then there's been enough work done to build it back correctly? Or is this just who knows what's going to happen next?
36:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it's, it certainly does seem to be toeing the line of like, they could seriously break something and the effects of that could be really irrevocable, right? Because kind of building on what I, what I said before about how fragile the system is and how understaffed and how overworked all of these people are, you know, and this is a system in which there's a direct correlation between experience and safety, right? So you can't just bring in a bunch of 25-year-olds to reimagine your air traffic control system, right? This is a system in which it takes years to train ATC workers. Pilots are evaluated based on the number of hours that they're up in, up in the air, that, you know, a pilot
37:00 Speaker 02 who has 5,000 hours of flight time is like said to be like over, almost 60% less likely to be involved in a crash. This is a place where experience matters. And Sean Duffy is a congressman who used to be on The Real World. So, and Road Rules Challenge, but which like, that's fine. Good for him, but it doesn't seem like that's necessarily where his experience is. It's not in the transportation world. It's definitely not in safety systems. And whoever they bring in to run the FAA, they've got an acting administrator there right now. But if they're gutting that agency, you're going to be losing a lot of that expertise. And the people who are supposed to be in charge of making sure that these planes stay up
37:43 Speaker 02 in the air, because it's not DEI that's keeping them up there, and it wasn't Pete Buttigieg. It's experienced ATC workers and experienced pilots and experienced flight attendants and all the people on the ground at the airports and the people at Boeing and Airbus and all of the plane manufacturers, making sure that they're not skimping and pinching pennies and trying to cut costs and maximize value for shareholders, but that they're actually building planes and technology that will just work. And that's what you want. You just want a system that works. And that's what it does usually. And I think that that's what the data holds up, right? That the system mostly does work and has been working and is improving. And there is worry that these guys, Elon and Trump being sort of bulls in a china shop, that will put a lot of that at risk.
38:28 Speaker 02 And I think that there is a danger there.
38:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, we're going to keep tracking it. In the meantime, my personal belief is that the safest route in America is between Elon's weird compound in Austin and Mar-a-Lago.
38:42 Speaker 02 Yes, but we wouldn't know it because if we track those planes, that's doxing.
38:45 Speaker 01 Every day, the risk of us going to jail for on the verge increases. Andy, thank you so much for being on Decoder.
38:51 Speaker 02 It's my pleasure. Thanks, Neil.
38:55 Speaker 01 I'd like to thank Andy for joining me on the show and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. You have thoughts about this episode or really anything, you can email us at [email protected] . We really do read all the emails. You can also hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky, and we have a TikTok, for as long as there's a TikTok, and now an Instagram. They're both at DecoderPod. They're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you really love the show, hit us with that five-star review. Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.
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