Flying is still safe, for now — but the FAA isn’t
40:43 Share

Thank you.

That's www.alixpartners.com slash V-O-X.

In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil A. 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 I've seen this happen before, and I've seen this happen before, and I've seen this happen before.

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.

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 they cause a constitutional crisis. 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 Daryl 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. ♪

Annie Hawkins, welcome to Decoder. Hello. Thanks for having me. 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. Ah, damn it. So a real bait and switch. Sorry, buddy. It's all right.

I'm used to it. 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. It's amazing. That to me was just a sign that something has changed. Our perception of air travel has changed. We're

there have been a number of incidents, a number of crashes, a deadly crash in Washington, D.C. 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? 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 in a

and a helicopter that resulted in 67 people being killed. But then on top of that, there was this flight in South Korea that, 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? That has led to sort of the growing perception of,

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. 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 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 die.

And that is a huge, huge improvement over – 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, if you think about only one person dying per 13.7 million passengers 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.

All right, let me challenge you. I realize this isn't your study, but I'm going to push you on this. Yes, please. Because 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 yeah 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 bad 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

Chaos is increasing. Whether or not statistically it's safer because more and more people are flying. 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 D.C., 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. 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 to when most people assess risk, it's over the long term, right? So you're looking at years, you're looking at decades of

Darrell 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, we do have to think about the observed rate and that these things are not going to be happening equally spaced out, right? 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, right?

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, 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.

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.

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 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 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. Yeah.

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 and the COVID-19 pandemic and all of these things have sort of had a compounding effect. But 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 percent of the 313 air traffic control facilities that operate in this country are below recommended staffing level.

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 at most of these agencies are the people who were just hired because they're a lot easier to fire. They don't have the same level of

protections for them. I mean, 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

It's an 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. We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. You already know artificial intelligence will be transformative. Beyond that, it might be a little bit of a mystery. As AI upends the tech industry, Alex Partners is dedicated to making sure your business knows what really matters when it comes to artificial intelligence. Because disruption brings not only challenges, but opportunities. In these pivotal moments of change, Alex Partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on.

♪♪♪

You can see the results and learn how you can turn digital disruption into growth by reading Alex Partners' latest technology industry insights, available at www.alexpartners.com. That's www.alexpartners.com. In the face of disruption, Alex Partners are who businesses trust to get to the point and to get things done when it really matters.

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. 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.

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 joke was that DEI was actually keeping the planes up loft. 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 they were attempting to train and hire more ATC workers. But I do think that also that under Buttigieg, the USDOT was really more focused on like the consumer experience of flying, 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 seek redress with the airlines when these meltdowns occurred. And maybe he didn't quite see the level of crisis that was going on 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. And I do know that Congress has been accused of defunding the FAA over these last several decades, which is also a huge problem as well. 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.

And I think that's something that is going to 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 safety improvements that is really just like not seen in like any other safety system that's out there? So I do think that that's going to be a real fierce debate that we're going to see sort of unfold over the next few years. So Pete's solution was we should hire more people, right? The crisis is in the staffing levels. The staffing levels, as you said, at 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, in the classic Trump way, has imagined, I think he calls it a beautiful 3D system. I don't know what that means. Sounds great. It sounds amazing. Very reliable. Whatever that is, right? But it is true that our current system is fairly archaic.

If you look at – we'll put some links in the show notes. You can look at pictures of what air traffic controllers 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 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? 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 past few weeks. So we asked to sort of take, you know, Musk 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, right?

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 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 have stayed in that role, but 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 to, you know, 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 or

a potentially immense conflict of interest in terms of, you know, how much say Musk is having over this process and in what ways is this going to benefit SpaceX. The FAA brought in a team from SpaceX to try to see where, places in which it could benefit

get some efficiencies out of its system, improve its technology. Because as you noted, yes, we're dealing with a system that, you know, they're still using rotary phones and extremely out-of-date obsolete technology. And, you know, I do think it is imperative for the FAA to figure out a way 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 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. It's unclear what the motivation is. Is the motivation to improve the FAA and replace this outdated system? Or is it just to enrich Elon Musk's company? Yeah.

Yeah. You're being very polite and saying it raises conflict of interest concerns. Like, I will just say that appears to be outright corruption. I will also say Verizon is not short on lobbyists in D.C. Yeah. And our nation's government is not short on well-funded dinners paid for by telecom lobbyists. Yeah, but their lobbyists are not embedded in the government right now. Right.

now, right? Like maybe that's the difference. I'll just say this is a purist test. If you've built that ecosystem, 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, I 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. Right.

Which would be a 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. And then there's...

Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation 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 a stressful job. And then we're also at the same time undoing the foundation that they would work upon and

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.

Yeah, I mean, in some ways, it seems like they were kind of caught in a bind, right? Like, 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 D.C.,

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 confront that same level of scrutiny in the same way at all of the other agencies that they've been slashing and burning 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 bureaucracy, but they do realize that this is sort of the one place where they really can't do that. The Verizon contract that it appears that SpaceX wants for itself, that is a contract to provide communication services between the towers, right?

Verizon's pretty good at communication services. Is there something else there that...

Starlink can do better? Does anyone know? 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- Steak dinners, Andy. It was based on steak dinners. Steak dinners.

We're not telecom lobbyists. We're not a friendly subject at The Verge. But yeah, sure. There was a process. There was a process. There was a little grease in the wheels.

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 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 a panel and ask them about this. And I haven't heard anybody say a whisper about any of this yet. We need to take another quick break. We'll be right back. ♪

Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. You already know artificial intelligence will be transformative. Beyond that, it might be a little bit of a mystery. As AI upends the tech industry, Alex Partners is dedicated to making sure your business knows what really matters when it comes to artificial intelligence. Because disruption brings not only challenges, but opportunities. In these pivotal moments of change, Alex Partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on.

♪♪♪

You can see the results and learn how you can turn digital disruption into growth by reading Alex Partners' latest technology industry insights, available at www.alexpartners.com. That's www.alexpartners.com. In the face of disruption, Alex Partners are who businesses trust to get to the point and to get things done when it really matters.

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 that 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 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.

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 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? I do think it has been analyzed and debated. I'm not sure whether or not, you know, the length 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 length that anybody actually reads those anymore, but we'll see it on the news, right? It's 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 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, two of which crashed and killed everybody on board. I hope that when this debate takes off,

that serious people on both sides can ask themselves, what are we trying to gain out of this and what could we potentially lose? Especially when it comes to the safety improvements that we've seen, these gains over the last several decades, which are fantastic, but they don't just go up. They could seriously start to fall back if there are serious changes. Because all of this is being run

Every day, millions of flights taking place every day. When you swap out a communication system or suddenly 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. 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 national champion of building planes and then they started trying to increase their margin.

But cheaping out on parts and cheaping out 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 then if competition dwindles, you get weird monopoly margin profit seeking behavior. Right.

Is there a market for air traffic control services in the United States? 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 if 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? Yeah.

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 more abundant and relying on obsolete technology. And public-private partnerships aren't necessarily a bad thing.

But I do think that we have to 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 in the UK and Canada, they have modernized their systems. They've undertaken that effort over the last decades. And now their systems are running pretty safely. But there are also 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.

Is it as simple as maybe we just automate all of this? Because that feels like the next Elon move, right, is to say, well, look, you know, there was the deadly crash in D.C. 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. There was also the staff shortage. I think there was a person that was maintaining both 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 tower area.

when 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 I'm somewhat encouraged

by the supercharged 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. They actually agree and see the advantages to a human run system. And I think that that's encouraging.

I'm just saying the Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it will not stop. You want to ask ChatGPT whether or not the plane can land now? I mean, if the goal is safety improvement, 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. You want Grok to run our ATC system? That's fine. I will never fly again, but I wish you the best of luck. Is that what other countries are doing? 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.

Yeah. I mean, it seems obvious and likely, right? 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 air travel, it's not about, you know, making stupid pictures of Kamala Harris pointing a gun at,

Donald Trump, it's about people's lives, right? And I think that that's something that a lot of the autonomous vehicle companies and the robo-taxi 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. So I do think that 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 in which millions of people are flying every day. So I do agree that it's coming. And I wonder whether or not we are ready to have these conversations about the safety of these systems. Last question. It feels like

The big picture need for change is obvious to everyone, 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 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. Right.

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?

Yeah, I mean, it certainly does seem to be towing 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 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 the air. That, you know, a pilot who has 5,000 hours of flight time is like said to be like 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 RADF.

the real world. So I, 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 in the air. Because it's not DEI that's keeping them up there and it wasn't Pete Buttigieg. It's experienced people.

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. And I think that there is a danger there. 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. Yeah.

Yes, but we wouldn't know it because if we track those planes, that's doxing. Every day, the risk of us going to jail for running the verge increases. Andy, thank you so much for being on Decoder. It's my pleasure. Thanks, Nila. I'd like to thank Andy for joining me on the show and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have thoughts about this episode or really anything, you can email us at decoderattheverge.com. 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.

Thank you.

That's www.alixpartners.com slash V-O-X.

In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters.