Buttigieg on FAA and Southwest Meltdowns

WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane, and Secretary. Pete Buttigieg, welcome back to the show.

PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION: Good to be back.

ISAACSON: Yesterday, we had one of the worst ground stoppages since 9/11 because of an FAA computer glitch. Tell me what you’re doing to fix that.

BUTTIGIEG: Well, this is a level of disruption that can’t happen again. And so our focus now is making sure we understand all of the issues that affected not just the system itself, but the redundancies. As you could imagine, a system this important for safety has backups. But in this case, that was not sufficient to prevent a disruption. Now the ground stop that was called, that was a shutdown lasting about an hour and a half in the morning. That was important in order to make sure that we were being absolutely certain that all flight operations were safe by the time they resumed. But that’s not something that should be happening routinely. And so we need to make sure we pinpoint all of the different contributing factors to this situation and identify the next steps that are gonna be needed.

ISAACSON: Well, one of the underlying problems was probably there was a 17 year old system older than most of us would use in our businesses. How many other systems like that are more than 10 or 15 years old?

BUTTIGIEG: You know, there are a lot, this is part of the bigger story of America’s aging infrastructure, whether we are talking about a piece of physical infrastructure like a bridge, or whether we’re talking about a piece of digital infrastructure or software. Now we’ll say that we have been and are undertaking a number of system improvements, upgrades and replacements across the FAA because we know that the aviation system is changing. But it’s being done with a great deal of caution because, of course, the other thing you have to do anytime you’re making a change is preserve the safety record of US aviation. It’s an extraordinary thing that millions of passengers fly at nearly the speed of sound across the country and across the world. And that in a typical year, now we have zero commercial airliner deaths in the US. That doesn’t just happen on its own. And it means that even as we look to the systems of the future, we have to make sure that we build on and preserve that track record that I think is a challenge in front of the FAA. And as we go into a new season of authorization with the five year legislation that really lays the groundwork for the budget and the systems this will obviously be an important moment for lessons learned.

ISAACSON: What will be in that FAA reauthorization bill involving things like air traffic control?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, I think we’re going to see everything up for that periodic look. Whether we’re talking about the air traffic control system, the system that was implicated in this outage, which is actually a different safety system. Or the broader issues that we have to prepare for, not just for passenger aviation as we know it, but moving toward how it’s going to evolve, for example drones and uncured aerial systems and vehicles. There’s going to be much, much more of this in the years to come. The same as true for commercial space travel, which used to be something that our department would license. Occasionally there’s been an explosion in the pace of commercial space launches. That pace is going to continue picking up and ensuring that that is safe and that integrates with our national airspace is going to take a lot of work. So, I think this will be really an exceptionally dynamic time. And the dialogue with Congress, I think is gonna be an important part of how we prepare for that.

ISAACSON: I’m on the board of an airline, and we’ve always talked about NextGen air traffic control. Tell me what that is, what’s happening with it, and what you would like to see in a really great 21st century air traffic control system.

BUTTIGIEG: Well, when you think about how air traffic control works today, it builds on the paradigm that has always governed air traffic control all the way down to the systems when you’re in a tower. A lot of the processes are, are human and a lot of the processes are backed by remarkable technology. But that tra technology has been built layer upon layer. Nextgen is about making sure that we have a new paradigm for the future. And it’s difficult to describe in simple terms because we’re not even talking about one system. We’re talking about multiple systems working on top of each other. Some upgrades have already happened, ways to for example, have some of what used to be done by radio traffic between the tower and the airplane turned into information that can be commuted by text which is not just more efficient, but, but also has a safety benefit. But a lot of these things, again, can’t be done overnight and have to be done with extreme care to make sure that we’re preserving the extraordinary safety record of US aviation.

ISAACSON: There hasn’t been an FAA administrator since last March, and even Senator Cantwell, the Democratic Senator in charge of the committee hasn’t even scheduled a hearing on the nominee of the administration. Is that a problem?

BUTTIGIEG: Well certainly we need to get our administrator for the FAA confirmed. The president has nominated Phil Washington. He’s an extraordinary leader, currently an airport CEO who I think brings the right blend of aviation experience and a broader organizational leadership and management experience. You know, the previous administrator I worked well with and the current acting administrator who has a safety background, is doing a great job. But there is simply no substitute for having a Senate confirmed FAA administrator in the seat. And we are hopeful that this can get quick action because it’ll be an important part of preparing the FAA for the future.

ISAACSON: And Republicans like Senator Roger Wicker say he has no safety experience. Is that a problem?

BUTTIGIEG: Well again we’re talking about somebody who not only has the aviation experience that he’s built for example, in his current role as leader of the Denver Airport but also across various transportation and safety systems running LA Metro, for example. Somebody who was deeply involved in the presidential transition, helping us prepare for the change here at this department helped me prepare to become secretary. I believe that he is a terrific leader. I hope that Senator Wicker or any senator can be persuaded to support him. But of course, that’s how the process works, with hopefully an upcoming hearing testimony and vote.

ISAACSON: You stepped in right after Southwest had its problems in the past few weeks. Tell me what’s happening now and what you’re doing for passengers and making sure they do for passengers.

BUTTIGIEG: Well, our focus right now is to make sure that Southwest meets its responsibilities to passengers. We did a lot of work over the course of last year to hold airlines to a higher standard of customer service. And I think that work now is paying off because we’re able to require things from Southwest that wouldn’t have been possible just a few months ago. When we started publicizing airlines consumer Protection plans we got new stepped up enforceable agreements from multiple airlines, including Southwest, that give us now the ability to require things like taking care of ground expenses, hotels, meals vouchers, that kind of thing, in addition to what has long been the case, which is that passengers are required to get a refund if they request one on a canceled fight flight. We’re, we’re gonna be watching very carefully Southwest, really under a microscope right now to make sure that they meet those obligations. If they don’t there can be fines of tens of thousands of dollars per violation. And that is a tool that we’ve not hesitated to use in cases where airlines have dragged their feet taking care of passengers. Matter of fact last year we, I think, set a record for civil penalties in a single year, assessed against airlines that helped contribute to hundreds of millions of dollars of refunds getting back to passengers. But of course, what we’re looking for is for airlines to do the right thing to begin with so that it doesn’t come to an enforcement action and expecting and looking for Southwest to do just that. If anybody has an issue they can report it to our department. We will follow up and we’ll follow up with enforcement.

ISAACSON: You’ve talked about what you’re doing for the passengers, making sure they get all the compensations and ground expenses. Are you going to do that for the FAA? Stop it. Will the FAA make good of people? I think there were 1,200 flights canceled yesterday.

BUTTIGIEG: Well, we’re not a for-profit organization that sells airline tickets. We are primarily a safety organization, and the focus of the FAA has to be to take the steps that are needed to ensure that every flight operation is safe. That was not a step that was taken lightly in terms of the ground stop but the right thing to do to make sure that pilots and everybody involved in these flight operations was completely sure that everything they did would be completely safe. And every step we take, safety comes number one.

ISAACSON: You wrote a book called Trust, which I found really good. Help me how that ties in to what you’re doing with the infrastructure packages and the bridges you’re building.

BUTTIGIEG: Well, it ties in a great deal because I think public trust depends on people seeing policy work for them. And, you know, infrastructure is a great example of something that I think over time really chipped away at trust in America. We are a country that watched our infrastructure fall behind, began to fall behind other developed countries, largely because we simply weren’t investing the way we needed to in our roads and bridges in our airports and aviation systems in our trains and transit in our ports. And that definitely caught up to us over the years, especially in recent years, and we’re dealing with some of the effects of that right now. The great news is under the president’s bipartisan infrastructure law we now have the means to make those investments that have been a long time needed. Now, I think we can go from a vicious cycle to a virtuous cycle, because the more we are able to deliver to have moments like when I was in southern Indiana in a small community celebrating the improvements to their river port that’s gonna support jobs in that part of the area along the Ohio River or Connecticut, where we were celebrating the funding that we’re gonna put into the I-95 bridge there that so many people depend on, or when I was in Detroit where we’re taking a road that was, was set in such a way that that almost worked as a gash dividing the city and our funding Detroit and the state of Michigan, to reimagine it in a way that’s gonna actually connect people and serve those neighborhoods better. Every time we do that, we are building trust that I think will in turn, help build public support, provided we deliver well for further investments, further improvements, and that’s the way good government is supposed to work.

ISAACSON: When I saw you in Connecticut doing that bridge, and then of course, President Biden and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader doing it in Kentucky and Ohio, bridges are a great metaphor, a metaphor in some ways for bridging our political divides. There was a sense, especially in that Ohio, Kentucky thing that maybe we were turning to a more bipartisan or nonpartisan era. Do you see that as being a theme of the next two years as you do the infrastructure and as the Biden administration proceeds?

BUTTIGIEG: I do, especially as we get into a delivery mode. You know, we spent our first year as an administration really selling this package and getting it passed. And as you mentioned, it passed on a bipartisan basis, even though many people scoffed at President Biden’s idea that you could do a big bipartisan bill like this. That was year one. Getting it past year two, I was getting these programs up and running. Now in this third year, we’re really focused on delivering, getting those dollars out the door and getting things built. And there is something powerfully symbolic about the bridge building we’re doing. And, and that’s big iconic bridges like the Brent Spence Bridge where president Biden and and Leader McConnell were recently and also bridges that most people don’t know about, but if it’s in your community, means the world to you, we have 2,800 bridges that are already going to see improvements or seeing improvements now because of the work that we’ve done with this legislation and more, where that came from, and building bridges literally and physically is what we are about as an administration.

ISAACSON: There have been other great infrastructure waves in American history, and you’ve talked about them three or four ways, ones that did the railway, and then under Lincoln doing the land grant colleges under Eisenhower and others doing the interstate system. In some ways, I’m looking to figure out what is the theme of the 21st century wave that we’ll look back on in a generation, because so far it’s mainly been about just repairing the stuff we had 50 years ago.

BUTTIGIEG: You know, I think the enduring image is actually human beings and how we move through our infrastructure systems, those prior waves and they’re part of what inspires us in our work, but they tend to be focused on one form of transportation at a time. And so the image of the golden spike when the Lincoln era connection to the Transcontinental Railroad happened, or the interstate highway system under President Eisenhower, was usually about one particular form of transportation. What we’re doing right now is making sure that every form of transportation, whether we’re talking about aviation, shipping personal vehicles, public transit is not so much about the technology, the brick and mortar, the piece of concrete, the steel but it’s about what it’s like to go about your life and how your life is easier or harder, more affordable or less affordable, safer or less safe more or less just and equitable depending on the transportation that’s available to you. And if we can make sure that you have an affordable way to get to where you’re going, that it’s convenient, that it’s safe, and that it serves you well, no matter what zip code you live in no matter your racial or economic or social background, that American transportation is here to help you succeed, to help you go about your life, whether you’re a student, a worker, a parent, or all three of those things that I think is what success looks like for this generation of historic transportation investment.

ISAACSON: COVID really crushed some of our transit systems. Ridership has been down. There are no express trains in San Francisco. What could we be doing to get people back on to public transit?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, I think we need to make sure that public transit is a great offering for people to choose. So it’s not just surfing serving people who have no other means to get to where they’re going. But serving anybody who is trying to get around. That means making sure everything from look and feel and the perception of safety to the routes and frequency are all there. And part of why we’re making a historic investment in public transit with the infrastructure bill is we know that this can make a big difference. If you can have more frequent routes, if you can have more more routes – period, we know that that is one of the biggest things that can drive ridership. And then you can get a snowball effect, a positive snowball effect. It is going to take a while for transit agencies, even now, to climb out of what Covid confronted them with. But I think the future of transit, if we invest in the right ways, could actually be very bright going into the next decade.

ISAACSON: You know, when I was growing up 50 years ago, we had supersonic air travel. We talked about bullet trains. We were gonna be having high speed rail. Why don’t we have high speed rail? Why do we seem like we’ve regressed? And what, what are the technologies that are really futuristic that you think you could be pushing? Well, do you think there’s a future for high speed rail in the US?

BUTTIGIEG: It’s been such a difference in other developed countries, and we’re seeing a lot of other emerging technologies. But it’s pretty humbling when you try to get in the business of predicting it because often the developments are surprising. And I’ll give you an example. For all of the amazing things happening in transportation in vehicles in the last few years, I would argue the most important piece of transportation technology, the most important invention of the last decade, turned out to be the smartphone. That actually is not even a vehicle, but yet it’s changed how so many people travel. I think there’s a good chance that one of the most important developments in our time, even in this decade, will have to do with artificial intelligence. We already see moves toward things like automated driving. Although a lot has to be done before, we know that that can be used on a widespread basis. And so the truth is, whether we’re talking about vehicles and propulsion, or whether we’re talking about systems and software, we can’t guess at what every innovation will be, but we can work to make sure those innovations meet our most important goals, safety, affordability climate equity, making sure everybody’s served well. And those are all things that can get much better if we shape the development of the technologies in our time. For the benefit of all.

ISAACSON: Okay. Well Secretary Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much for joining us.

BUTTIGIEG: My pleasure. Thank you.