Stranded in Newark? The FAA's Air-Traffic Control Mess
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Plus, the House of Representatives votes to revoke a federal waiver that California is using to mandate electric vehicles, with 35 Democrats joining the eyes. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues, columnists Alicia Finley and Kim Strassel. Cancellations and delays have rippled through America's air travel system in the past week or so, starting in the hub of

of Newark, New Jersey. On Friday, the CEO of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, writing an open letter to customers. This is part of what he said in the past few days on more than one occasion. Technology that FAA air traffic controllers rely on to manage the airplanes coming in and out of Newark Airport failed.

He went on to say that the Newark air traffic hub is understaffed and United Airlines was going to unilaterally cancel 35 round trip flights per day from its Newark schedule starting this past weekend.

Here's audio of one of those disruptions last week, those technology failures, radio traffic between an air traffic controller and a pilot in the sky. No, you do not have a Bravo clearance. We lost our radar and it's not working correctly. Radar service terminated. If you want a Bravo clearance, you can just call the towers when you get closer.

Okay, I'll wait for that frequency from you, okay? Okay, no, just walk me as far, look up the tower frequencies. We don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are. We don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are, says the air traffic controller. Here yesterday was Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Fox News. Now, were planes going to crash? No, they have communication devices. They can see other air traffic like GPS in the airplanes.

But it's a sign that we have a frail system in place and it has to be fixed. But by the way, so here's the, so there's delays now at Newark.

Well, if you're driving down the road at 70 miles an hour and you get white paint in your windshield, you slow down. So we've slowed the traffic down at Newark. There's a runway that's under construction. And our primary goal is to make sure people are safe. And so when you have an incident like this, both lines now work, Laura. But when you have an incident like this, you want to make sure that people are safe. And so you just have less departures out of the airport until we feel comfortable and safe that the system isn't going to go down again.

The Federal Aviation Administration saying on Tuesday that some controllers who'd been working Newark arrivals and departures have taken time off to recover from the stress of multiple recent outages, unquote. And those personnel issues, Alicia, probably only adding that

the difficulties the FAA is facing. But what do you make of this? What's going on that is causing these problems in the air traffic control system? Who's to fault ultimately? Well, I'd say government and Congress ultimately is for not doing more to pass some reforms that could have averted some of these issues, perhaps privatization of the air traffic control. And we can get more into that later. But the approximate cause of the

disruptions that are continuing. I just looked because I had a flight scheduled into Newark on Wednesday, and then I just looked at that flight for today is now being delayed a few hours. So these are continuing flight disruptions and cancellations and delays. Is a shortage of air traffic controllers. The Philadelphia facility was

already understaffed and so is, by the way, the one in New York that oversees LaGuardia and JFK. But there are about 3,000 air traffic controls, about 3,000 controllers short at the airports around the country. Some bigger shortages at some, and that includes the Philadelphia facility that oversees the Newark airport.

Now, there was a plan last summer, by the way, to shift control from Long Island to Philadelphia to oversee Newark, and that was supposed to help with some of these shortages. But the workers that were eventually forcibly moved to Philadelphia were

They have always been disgruntled about this. The union opposed the move. It should have been done earlier. It took too long. Now, some of these are also the ones who have decided to file for trauma leave, which they are entitled to under federal law if they experience a traumatic injury.

So those 20% of workers who have now walked off have just exacerbated the shortage. And as Sean Duffy said, the air traffic control center there is just stretched. It can't handle the load. Some airlines like United have preemptively canceled flights, though probably not enough. And United, the CEO, has encouraged the FAA to force airlines, all airlines to cancel flights so you don't get all these delays.

But that is the root problem right now is the shortage of air traffic controllers. I mean, a broader problem is that there are technology problems, outdated technologies, some that go back to the 1960s. You know, it's still the air traffic control

or still use floppy disks, as he mentioned. And there's been work over the last couple decades, Congress mandated in 2003 that the FAA updated systems and provide this kind of next generation technology. And there isn't just one system, there are literally dozens of systems involved. But this has been a very slow going process.

that has been billions of dollars over cost and isn't even scheduled to be complete until 2030. And if that technological upgrades had been completed earlier, you would have actually had much more efficient routes and actually more automation. So the controller shortage wouldn't be as big of a problem as it is right now.

To underline the point, Kim, this is a government-run and managed air traffic control system. And so this next-gen overhaul that Alicia is talking about that is supposed to be complete in 2030, it was mandated by Congress in 2003.

And you can go back to these government watchdogs, the Government Accountability Office is one, and find reports warning about unsustainable systems and so forth. But the difficulty is it is a government-run system that provides

relies on Congress for funding and appropriations. It has these government unions it has to negotiate. And so the difficulty of running it and upgrading and managing it, I think, is in large part due to the nature of the beast here. This is not some kind of

private nonprofit the way that other countries' air traffic control systems are set up. Like in Canada, there was a privatization that was done there, and that is not what we have in the United States. So if there is air traffic control problems on your flight, it is a federal government failure. Can I give Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, credit for actually saying this is government's fault?

It's actually very refreshing to hear that rather than Pete Buttigieg, who every time one of these things would happen would come out and complain that somehow the commercial airlines were ripping people off and just behaving atrociously when in fact it's entirely government. And one piece of that is the tech industry.

In case anyone can't do the math, 2003 to 2030, when this project was meant to be completed from when Congress first told the FAA to do it, equals 27 years. 27 years. By the way, the FAA ought to have like a competition with the IRS to see who can be most useless in updating their technology systems.

And I'm not really sure who would win that competition. But I mean, the IRS is another great example. Elon Musk's team has been talking about what they're finding there. And they're basically using

codes in government that our kids have never even heard of before. And this is what happens when government is in charge of things. To your point, Kyle, most developed nations, and I guess in this category, we don't even get to qualify for that term, places like Australia, places like Canada, New Zealand,

Germany, the United Kingdom, they have all moved to either private nonprofits that run their airline systems or public-private partnerships. And the virtue of those is that you have an entity that is not the government, actually has usually more

expertise and knowledge about how all of this should work. It doesn't have to run through 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate who all have parochial concerns about what should happen to this airport and are they going to have their essential routes maintained and all of the other things that come along with jockeying over how you run the FAA.

So you get that into a sector and then they also often have the freedom and the ability to plow money back into reinvestment and upgrade. So they have systems that are not only more efficient, but actually are safer as a result and are keeping pace with technological innovation.

I mean, the other thing that we can get into this. So one half of its tech and the other half of it is unions. And that comes back to Congress as well, too, though, because it isn't just that unions have now come to essentially dominate so many of these discussions and get in the way of any progress. But again, add 535 members of Congress who all have parochial interests. A good example is, for instance, where we train our coming senators.

air traffic controllers and where that location is and how long they have to serve. Those are all subject to congressional negotiations, too. And we can talk about that. But this is a this is a union problem and this is a tech problem.

And that's a pretty good rejoinder, I think, to arguments that the government should do something new, that the government should take up more of American health care. I often wondered myself, why don't the people who want government to do more in American life figure out how to get the government to efficiently run the corners of American life that it already has control over, including the FAA and this air traffic control business?

Alicia, there was notably a push to privatize air traffic control during the first Trump administration. The president got behind it. There was some legislation that was drawn up by Congressman Bill Schuster, but it did not get over the finish line. And for similar sorts of reasons, there were arguments about

Who benefits under the current system? General aviation? Would this new nonprofit charge higher fees to private pilots? And all those kinds of arguments. And that is the difficulty, is once you have a government system set up like this, there are people who are winners under that system. There are entrenched interests.

And so, I mean, this is a key place, I think, where if President Trump wanted to do some good, he could provide some leadership on this issue and go back and say, you know, remember that bill that we were talking about in 2017, 2018, that would make our air traffic control system more efficient, look more like Canada's? Why don't we take that back up and get some presidential arm twisting and some leverage maybe to make that an issue again? It fits, I think,

really well in with the broader message that the second Trump term, broader message of the second Trump term of efficiency, of reducing regulation, of the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, this effort to update America's systems. I don't know why that isn't at the top of President Trump's agenda, seeing the chaos that travelers are experiencing in Newark in the past week or so. Right.

Again, it got out of the House Transportation Committee in 2017 and 18. However, it stalled and get to the floor because of these entrenched interests, one of which initially was Delta Airlines. And it put out this report saying that the

the plan would end up resulting in higher fees for American flyers, which is something now that Chuck Schumer is invoking or has invoked against the idea. Though studies that have actually looked at the fees, the charged user fees in these places like Canada and the UK versus what are essentially taxes in the US, have found that when you actually adjust for different things like the length of routes

and wage restrictions and all that, fees are actually really lower in these other countries than they are in the U.S. And part of that goes to the incentives to become more efficient and technological upgrades. So I think that's been kind of a red herring argument that has been thrown around. But also back to the point about the business interests, the

The business jet industry, at least several years ago, had paid about 0.6% of aviation user taxes, but they accounted for 11% to 13% of controlled traffic. So they were essentially kind of free riding on this, the current system. And they were worried that they would have to end up there, the CEOs and the business operators,

corporate jets would end up having to pay more to support this new privatization model. But that would actually invariably result in other American flyers paying less, which is probably why you see it again, like when you look at other countries that have moved toward the model, and Kim mentioned a few, but actually most of the developed world has moved to this model. It's actually far less expensive. And I also think it's kind of ironic that even countries like Canada and UK are

Australia that have socialized healthcare systems and have much bigger government control over businesses. Even they've gone this route. So the U S is really an outlier. And then for a large reason, because of the parochial interests, I can mention the unions, which have been kind of actually showed an interest or a,

openness to actually privatization model. Because I think that they think that while they may actually be able to get higher pay controllers, because right now there are essentially wage controls on how much the FAA can pay engineers, but also controllers. So because of that, it's been harder to recruit both engineers, top to high skilled engineers, as well as controllers or people who are interested in these jobs.

So if you had a private marketplace, then, you know, maybe, yes, they would pay more, but you'd also be able to get more of them. So you don't want to have these shortages. Hang tight. We'll be right back. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort.

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Welcome back. Let's turn to Capitol Hill and an interesting vote last week under the Congressional Review Act or the CRA, which lets lawmakers overturn regulatory actions by the executive. In this case is a waiver given by the Environmental Protection Agency that California is using for its electric vehicle mandate.

And Kim, notably, the vote in the House to reverse that is 246 to 164 and 35 Democrats voting yes, including but not only from states like Ohio and Michigan. What do you make of the politics on this, Kim? If there were a push

under President Biden to have repealed this, I do not think it would have gotten even close to 35 Democrats. So is there a bit of a change in the air on electric vehicles or at least these kinds of mandates that California is pursuing? What a difference an election makes, right? Yeah.

So I think a couple of things. Donald Trump came in and a big theme in his campaign was government should not be controlling your life and telling you what you can and can't buy and you must have. And those sort of campaign promises really resonated with Americans. A lot of it had to do with household appliances like washing machines, you know,

make your washing machine great again. But also these EV mandates, which for so long, I think we were all under this. It was almost like a bully campaign. Nobody wanted to come out and say we're opposed to EVs because good people all believed that this was absolutely necessary. And it was a sign of your moral worth if you decided that, yes, we definitely needed to shift to electric vehicles.

Now that you have leaders in office that are happy to say, this is too controlling, these things don't work for a lot of people, they're expensive, the government shouldn't be messing in the market. Everyone is suddenly feeling free to say, yeah, this was a bad idea and why don't we just let people choose for themselves?

So 35 Democrats in Congress, they understand that there is some real resonance with the choice theme among consumers and voters. And this is good news broader from a policy perspective, because this waiver that Biden granted was quite insidious in that

It essentially was portrayed as a one-state waiver for California for it to deal with its smog problem. But of course, what it did is allow California, which of course has enormous economic heft in our economy, to come up with this mandate requiring automakers to slowly change the number percentage

of vehicles that they must sell each year to making it higher and higher each year of those that have to be EVs. 11 states followed California's lead, which had the potential to lead to a situation where automakers under this requirement to comply with California and 11 other states mandates would largely just be making EVs even if other people wanted internal combustion engines. So it had a national effect.

And Lee Zeldin, the new EPA administrator, when he came in, he declared that this was not a waiver. It effectively was a rule and submitted it to Congress, which thereby allowed Congress to hold this vote under the Congressional Review Act.

Leijon, what are the details of this waiver, what California is trying to do? And if it's so unrealistic, then how does California even expect these automakers to be able to meet those targets that are really coming down the pike in only a matter of a few years? Right. So with the

waiver allowed was for california said zero mission vehicle mandates essentially quotas for each individual automaker for sales would be 43 percent in 2027 68 by 2030 and 100 by 2035. now most automakers are only around eight to ten percent if that

statewide electric vehicle sales are a quarter but most of those are still teslas and even despite the whole blowback against elon musk tesla is still the top seller of evs in the state so the issue is when other auto companies fall short of these quotas they either get punished and they could even be barred from selling vehicles in the state or alternatively to comply they will have to buy

buy essentially credits from Tesla or other companies that have excess ones. And really Tesla is a little bit to some extent Rivian does now are the only ones who have credits. So this gives Tesla and Elon Musk enormous leverage to set prices on the credits. And essentially what the automakers would be doing would be subsidizing their competitors. And who knows what the price of these credits would be, but they may also be bigger than the losses that automakers are now

taking on the sale of each EV. Ford lost, I believe it was around $50,000 for every EV it sold last year. So all this gets to the issue of the market distortions that these mandates create. If automakers have to either buy credits from Tesla or have to sell cars at steep losses to move them from the dealer lots,

They're gonna have to make up those costs somehow, and that could either mean likely raising prices on gas powered cars, and also obviously they would have to produce fewer of them to meet these mandates, which would in itself raise the cost or prices because of constricted supply.

And people in states that don't even sign on to California's mandate, there are about a dozen of them, would end up invariably being affected. So that gets to the point of this waiver has national implications, which is why you saw so many representatives, not just from the states that follow California's mandate, but other states vote to overturn it. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break.

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Welcome back. Kim, we'll give you the last word now that this Congressional Review Act resolution has been passed to the House. The action moves over to the Senate. What do you expect there? And notably, one thing you mentioned a moment ago is that this waiver had been deemed a rule and submitted to Congress, but that seems to be part of the argument

over in the Senate appeals to the Senate parliamentarian that the waiver is not a rule and therefore is not subject to the Congressional Review Act. The argument, I guess, being that the waiver is just adjudicatory order. It is the EPA saying that it will not take action against California for whatever the

waived conduct is. But notably, Republican senators, as far as I can see in the press coverage of this, don't seem very inclined to respect that argument. And it looks like they're going to barrel forward and have a vote on this. And we will see how many Democrats might step up to overturn the California EV mandate in the Senate. Watch this space because Democrats are running a full cart campaign here to try to suggest that if Republicans move ahead in the Senate,

to overturn this rule, get rid of this rule under the Congressional Review Act, that they will have acted in unprecedented ways with lasting consequences that will damage the Senate. That's our argument. That's a bunch of nonsense. And there's an argument both on legal grounds, but also on just sort of politics and what's going on here grounds.

I would point people, if folks want to look at the kind of legality question of this, there was actually a really good piece in the Yale Law Review back in March that walked through

why it is eminently reasonable to consider this waiver a rule and submit it to Congress for this purpose, especially given, as we've been discussing, its nationwide implications. I mean, nobody buys the hilarious argument that somehow this is a one-state exception for California that will have no consequences for anybody else in the country.

But that Yale Law Review article actually has a very interesting history of some of the debates and fights over what counts as a rule, how you make that distinction. It's a good thing. I mean, it ultimately finds and makes a very persuasive argument that, yes, absolutely, this should be viewed as a rule and that the Senate should go ahead.

But there's also an argument here. It's funny. Democrats are claiming what's happened here is the government accountability office has come out with a finding that this should not be viewed as a rule. And the Senate parliamentarian has backed up the GAO. And that's part of the Democratic argument is, well, you know, for you to defund the

defy the GAO and defy the Senate parliamentarian. You're just setting a terrible precedent that we will follow and others will follow. And it could mean that any executive action could be called a rule and then anything could be overturned by the Congress. And you can't go down that road.

I think the bigger point to bear in mind here is actually the unprecedented aspect of this is what GAO has done. If you look, GAO has long held that all actions submitted to Congress are treated as rules.

and therefore would be subject under the Congressional Review Act. It was unusual and unprecedented for the GAO to instead step in here and basically kind of make arguments on behalf of the Biden administration as to why this should be made a waiver.

No one is supposed to say this out loud. GAO is meant to be an independent, nonpartisan agency. But I can certainly tell you that in private, there are certain Republicans that wonder about the unbiased nature of GAO at some point. And I think there's also an argument to be made as well, too, that, you know, at a certain point, you have to ask yourself who was elected to run the country. Was it the people that are actually sitting in office or is it this

unnamed faceless body called the GAO that has made this random determination that Congress can't act in this particular scenario. So I think there's a lot of arguments for Congress pushing back on that and also at the same time making clear that this is an exceptional circumstance.

And there's a precedent that also needs to be made to warn off other future Democratic administrations not to try to get away with junk like this, with a waiver just for California. Instead of going through the process, it would normally be required for something as far reaching as phasing out the internal combustion engine for the country.

So there's some pretty good arguments for why the Senate should go ahead. And right now, I'd expect that the Senate will do that, given the pressure that is on them by the base who expects them to take action here. Thank you, Kim and Alicia. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch.

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