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- [00:01]
Brene Brown
This episode is brought to you by indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. K Pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boy's breakfast meal and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [00:43]
Lowe's Advertiser
It is an honor to share.
- [00:44]
Brene Brown
No, it's our honor.
- [00:46]
Henry
It is our larger honor.
- [00:48]
Brene Brown
No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side
- [00:57]
Henry
and participate in McDonald's while supplies last is US air travel on the verge of a crisis? It can feel like it given recent high profile tragedies along with understaffing and underinvestment at the FAA and ballooning TSA lines during the government shutdown. Then there are the perennial complaints about airline service, seat size delays and cancellations and other headaches. What happened to the so called golden age of air? What's the reality and what are the solutions to some of these very real problems? Today, Darrell Campbell, aviation correspondent at the Verge, joins us to sort it out. Darrell, thank you so much for being here. Why don't we start? Why don't you just introduce yourself?
- [01:39]
Darrell Campbell
Sure, Henry. My name's Darrell. I am the author of Fatal Abstraction and an aviation writer for the Verge. And I actually got my start in the tech industry about, gosh, 16 years ago now. But my parents, my aunt and uncle, all of them have been aviation industry. And so I started writing for the verge about the 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 because I had that expertise on both the software and technology side. And if there are things that I didn't know, I just had a half a dozen people that I could call who are quite literally aerospace engineers who could really help me understand the technical side. And so that's been kind of my niche over the last couple of years is thinking about ways that I can apply my knowledge of technology, processes and really these gigantic complex systems systems into the aviation world and kind of make it accessible for people.
- [02:32]
Henry
And so you mentioned the 737 Max and that was one of the first or most recent episodes that made people sort of say, hey, wait, what is going on here? What's happening at Boeing? It used to be about safety, now it's about profit. Before we get to that and before we get to what's happening today, I want to, because this show is called Solutions, I want to set the table by positing that air travel in general is a miraculous solution that has been developed over a century. And I'll just set the table by saying less than 100 years ago, 99 years ago was the first solo flight across the Atlantic. Charles Lindbergh, 1930, an age that people sometimes think of as a golden age of air travel. In the year, only 6,000 people flew commercially and they flew on prop planes that had to land all the time. They couldn't fly at night, they couldn't fly in storms, they had to refuel, they were cold, you had to wear your coat. 1950s, we finally get the first jets. But it is still very much a jet set industry. You had to be really rich to fly. 1970s, which is what we all think of now. When we think of the golden age of air travel, we get these wonderful pictures of Pan Am first class, and we think that that's what all flying was like. By then, things started to really heat up. But in the last 50 years, we are now up to today 1 billion passengers a year and 3 million a day in the U.S. the cost of air travel is down 30 to 50% from the 1970s on an inflation adjusted basis, and it is 95% safer. So I want to very respectfully suggest, like, the last 50 years seem to have been pretty good. I mean, again, we're all very frustrated all the time, but there have been a lot of improvements. Like, what's the reason for that? What's happened that has made air travel so much safer and cheaper? Before we get to the problems, I
- [04:28]
Darrell Campbell
think there's three things that you can really point to. I think the first one is technology. Even as late as the 1990s, accidents were still relatively common. You know, it wasn't like you were taking your life into your own hands every time you got on board an airplane. But even in the last 20 or 30 years, there have been substantial improvements to things like efficiency, safety, and mechanical reliability. That's a lot of technology, material science, and really things like, you know, 20 years ago, there weren't such a thing as carbon fiber airplanes, but there are today, and that creates additional safety things that, you know, it's easier to Maintain it's generally more reliable in terms of when it's going to break. So there's the technology side. I think the second thing is the system side. It's still true today that human error is the biggest cause of potential problems in safety on aviation. But we've always gotten better about how do you make sure that passengers and pilots are communicating, how do you make sure that if the co pilot sees something but the pilot doesn't, that they can communicate and make sure that they're on the same page. So that's just incremental change over time. But really understanding every time an accident happens, when what were the main causes and how do we get better? And then the third thing, and I know this is kind of a hot button issue for people, is really about regulation. One of the best safety agencies in the world is the ntsb, the National Transportation Safety Bureau. And they make sure that they have a very non judgmental, nonpartisan approach to these accidents that really tries to get to the root cause. So if you think about the helicopter accidents over DCA last year, you know, they really made sure that this process needs to be changed in terms of where helicopters can fly. We have to maintain better spacing. We have to have controllers aware of all that's going on. So that yes, it's a tragedy, but what can we learn from it? And that kind of thing is just sort of stacking improvements over time so that you're never trying to make something more efficient just for the sake of that when you're sacrificing safety.
- [06:40]
Henry
And look, I remember I grew up in the 1970s and I remember frequent accidents that sort of lay down a fear of flying for a lot of people. And we did go through a period where we were seemingly remarkable in terms of the lack of them. And then more recently, the D.C. tragedy that you mentioned, and recently we had the incident at LaGuardia that was another tragedy, although much smaller, thankfully much fewer people. But is the perception, are things getting worse?
- [07:12]
Darrell Campbell
Well, things are certainly getting better covered. And I think the biggest thing that I've noticed, even in the eight or nine years since I've been covering it, is the amount of first person and direct video evidence of what's going on has really increased. I mean, even as late as 2015 or 2016, you didn't have people who were filming out the window all the time when an accident happened. And so you get more video evidence of things like engines catching fire and even some of these videos from crashes where passengers are exiting. So I think that Creates a very understandable fear in people that they can actually see something that maybe in the past they only heard about or secondhand or from a news report. And I think the other thing is aviation is by far the most safe form of transportation, but it's never going to be zero. And I think you have to set against the very big news of an airplane crash or an accident like we had at LaGuardia, against the backdrop of, you know, tens of thousands of people die every year in car accidents, but each one is just limited to one person and they don't get nearly the same amount of coverage, if they get any at all. So I think we do a bad job, especially in the news industry, of putting things in context, like you said. And, you know, even though an aviation crash is understandably big news in the grand scheme of things, it's still a very safe way to fly, especially in the U.S. canada and Western Europe.
- [08:36]
Henry
And I you hear about more about what happened at LaGuardia, for example, where a controller seemingly got distracted or was dealing with another emergency. It's actually remarkable to me that it doesn't happen more often and how amazing at their jobs so many air traffic controllers have to be. And so one of the areas that I want to start about talking about actually is air traffic control. And according to the news, there are huge staffing shortages. We've got the air traffic controllers that we have to, who we are, who are working, have to work overtime. They have to work six days a week in some cases, were understaffed in a lot of areas. It just seems like such a basic, obvious area where the country should be able to provide a fully staffed, modern aviation air traffic control industry. Why not? What is the problem?
- [09:29]
Darrell Campbell
Well, I think the biggest thing is that it just takes a lot of inertia to move some of these initiatives forward. Because the FAA is a federalized, nationalized system. In a lot of countries, air traffic control is either partially or fully privatized. And so it's easier for companies to make incremental changes over time so that you don't have these big news articles and big crises before you can make a change. Whereas in our system, it really does take a crisis to push things forward. I mean, to the government's credit, within a couple of days of the LaGuardia incidents from last year, when you had systems actually failing for minutes at a time where controllers could not see what was happening in the air, you know, they announced billions of dollars for improvements to Internets, to satellite relays and other kinds of technologies. That really should have been happening for the last 10 or 15 years, but just didn't because that's kind of the model that was in there. I think it's, it's part of the problem is it's become a political issue when it really should be just a general safety issue. Nobody's saying, oh, we should make our skies less safe. But for whatever reason that doesn't translate into the political capital to just continue making these ongoing investments until, as I said, a crisis happens.
- [10:48]
Henry
And so for continuing investments, is it just that the budget is not big enough? And just to put the budget in context, we're talking about, I think, $11 billion for air traffic control. That is similar to things like federal prisons. And the of money we at least used to give to the National Science foundation and the Justice Department. It is a tiny fraction of say the Defense Department or Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid. So. And it seems like it's just such basic modern infrastructure. So is the fight that every year Congress just says, no, you can't have more than that, even though you need to upgrade your systems? Is that the problem? Or would the people who are saying we should privatize it, are they right that there's just no incentive for it to be better so nobody insists on it?
- [11:37]
Darrell Campbell
Well, I would definitely say that the pro privatization tends to gloss over some of the challenges. And actually one of the things is that it doesn't take one year to fix this. When you introduce a new system like the brand new air traffic control system that they're discussing right now, it takes two or three years just to develop it in tandem with the current system to make sure everything is translating at least as well, if not better, then it takes a couple of years to go through the procurement process. Everybody has to be vetted by the government. They have to go through what can be a very laborious contracting process before they even get the right to implement what they're trying to sell. And then after that, it's sort of a 5 to 10 year phased implementation where they pick a couple smaller airports. But just to give you a more concrete example, we've been trying to upgrade some of the radar systems that we've had that have been in place since quite literally the 1980s, 1990s. They were supposed to be starting the procurement process in 2000, 2001, and done by the end of the 2015s or so, and that was the best case scenario. But just because of the delays, the kind of rug pull from one administration to the Other when budget priorities change, it's now 2026 and that still hasn't happened. And they're saying it may be 2030 before some of these things that have been in flight for decades will actually start having an impact across big airports like New York, LaGuardia, JFK and so on. So I think there's some general inefficiency that happens. I think there's something specific to the federalized procurement process and then there's just some things that are never going to go away because it's a complex, safety focused system and that's just not something you want to rush.
- [13:22]
Henry
And so talk about privatization, because when I hear that and I think about a management team surviving and not being fired over a decade of not delivering on a very basic project like that where you have to upgrade some equipment, suddenly I am naturally sympathetic to the idea that, hey, if this were a private company, it would be different. Would it be. Is there anything to that argument or are the folks who say, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know, then it's going to be up about profit. It won't be safe. The airlines will control it if, even if it's nonprofit. Just talk about that side of it.
- [13:58]
Darrell Campbell
Yeah, I would say it's. I know this isn't a very satisfying answer, but it's probably a lot more complicated than that. I think the thing about the air traffic control system in particular is that it's not supposed to be a profit generating system. And so some of the incentives for a corporation to come in just aren't really there. Like you're never, it's never going to be a viable thing where I say, hey, I can give you this brand new system, but by the way, it's going to add $100 to your average ticket price because that's just the cost of doing it. So you're already in this environment where there's just not a lot of profit incentive and the margins just don't lend themselves well, in the best case scenario. And then when you think about, well, you know, it may take a couple of years of overrun and you're not going to be delivering profits for five to 10 years in the implementation process that makes it even harder to get behind. We've seen this happen in places like Canada and the UK where there were either additional costs passed on to the consumer when they implemented a private system around air traffic control that I think just wouldn't fly. Sorry, bad pun, unintentional, but just wouldn't happen in the US Just because people are so focused on air travel almost as a right to get around and that they really want a very inexpensive option.
- [15:15]
Henry
And so what about the Canadian system is nonprofit, I gather. So there is no profit margin there and the airlines have to pay for it from what I understand. So, so is that a better system?
- [15:25]
Darrell Campbell
Well, it's a different one in two ways. So number one, just the volume of passengers through Canada is a fraction of what it is in the United States. I think it's something like 10%. So even though on paper the like for like analysis looks like the Canadian system is inherently better because the cost is lower, I imagine that once you add another couple hundred million people in there, it might start to break down. And I think the second thing is when Canadian privatization process happened, they actually built in some of the fee structure so that they were actually paying for it out of the gate. So just to give you an example, in Canada it takes about $11 per passenger to screen them through security and do all of the federalized processes that are analogous to the ones in the US and then the funds that they raise from fees on airline tickets and so on bring in about $13. So they actually set it up to be profitable. Now you flip that to here in the US we charge only about $5 per flight segment for something like the TSA, but it costs closer to $13 per passenger to screen it. So we're already operating at a loss. So you can imagine how it would be difficult to say, hey, we're going to privatize it. And by the way, in order for the private companies to really kind of make up that margin, we're going to add, what is it, eight or nine dollars per flight segment. Like that's just not going to work because it's again, a very value focused customer segment, lot of people.
- [16:52]
Henry
So the idea that American consumers could not afford another $7 to have the TSA pay for itself or to have the right radar at JFK or what have you per flight just sounds preposterous to me. So, so why. Or I shouldn't say preposterous. Very believable. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to. But is, is that a solution? I mean, what, what, what do we have to do to get, to use your example, the right radar at jfk?
- [17:19]
Darrell Campbell
Yeah, I think part of it is you have to offset the very value focused consumers desire to pay less, which is totally understandable with some of the almost the fear of, you know, hey, we've got this problem. And that's the only thing that's gonna push the political equation over the line. I actually don't think it's the case that the average consumer is not willing to pay for it, but I do think it's the case that the average politician isn't gonna stick their neck out. Hey, I think we should, let's say, spend an extra $10 per passenger to get an up to date air traffic control system. Just because that's essentially electoral poisoned. Especially in places where you have a really large aviation industry.
- [18:03]
Henry
It is sad if that's the case, that no politician will say, hey, wait a minute, like this is a core service that a lot of us use. Let's spend a little bit more and get it in there. All right, so you've written about the TSA too, which is another point of a frustration for a lot of flyers. On the other hand, and a huge organization employs 50,000 people across 400 airports, seems to be doing a good job, even though perhaps it's not the most efficient in the world. What is your take on the tsa?
- [18:36]
Darrell Campbell
Well, I think the way you phrase that is, that is very accurate. It seems like it's doing a good job. It is the universal experience that anyone who goes to an American airport will encounter tsa. And it is incontrovertible fact that you will see the TSA people doing a lot of things. Now, whether that translates into improved security is up for debate and in my view, probably not accurate. Every so often the TSA does what they call a challenge where they send a red team in with fake guns, fake bombs to go through security checkpoints and hopefully the TSA will capture them. But in practice, TSA fails to catch them. In the publicly released studies that I've seen between, they fail to catch them between 80 and 90% of the time. So they're at a baseline not being very effective at their jobs. And then you think about all of the added processes, ID checks, taking off your shoes, which, you know, it took five years to implement that process and 20 years to undo it. There's just a lot of things that people do just to go through the motions of safety. But realistically, the, there's no evidence that any of it actually works. I think if you sort of flip it around, you know, there's an actuarial measure which they call the cost per life saved. So the, the amount of money that society has to pay in order to save a life in XYZ way. So something like mandatory seatbelt laws is about a couple of hundred dollars or things like, you know, the Little arms that come down if you're crossing the train tracks. It's a couple thousand dollars per intervention. If you take the best case scenario, it costs the TSA $15 million per life saved to get any return on that investment. And that's if you assume that the TSA is stopping one 911 style attack every single decade. Realistically, we know that's not happening. And if you kind of redo the calculations, assuming that they're not doing 911 style attacks every decade and the TSA isn't solely responsible for stopping them, that cost per life saved goes up to an astronomical 667. And the governance baseline is like $10 million is the cutoff between efficient and not efficient intervention. So that's what I always think of when I think about the quote, unquote effectiveness of tsa.
- [20:53]
Henry
When you put it that way, it's quite striking. How do you think people would feel if we did away with it? Or is there a much more scaled down version that would be 80% as effective or what have you?
- [21:06]
Darrell Campbell
I think the challenge with airport security is that it's always, number one, a public relations play. So like I said, the whole security theater side, and number two, it's always oriented to the last threat environment. So in the 1960s and 1970s, the big challenge to airport security was people hijacking airplanes and flying them to Cuba. So few passengers were at risk, even though airplanes were getting hijacked at a rate of about one a month. So they implemented those first checks, the metal detectors, the security people. Like, quite literally in the 60s, you just walk into the airport and there was no security. So if they implemented at that baseline, then in the 80s, there was the Lockerbie bombing and a couple other ones. So that's when they started doing X ray scans of baggage. And that one's a pretty straightforward intervention. I think that one's pretty effective. Then in 9 11, it was the whole system that's in place now to catch everything to the smallest box cutter or the person who might have put nitroglycerin in their underwear or whatever. And that's really not effective anymore for a couple of reasons. Number one, pilots know that it's a threat, so they've been trained not to comply with terrorist demands like they were pre 9 11. Number two, you got locked cockpit doors. And I think that's probably the most effective intervention in the post 911 era, where you're not allowed to enter the cockpit in flight under any circumstances. And then the third thing is just passenger reactions. People are now primed to look at someone who's being suspicious. And if someone tries to put a lighter down their pants or on their shoe, people are going to react. And you don't need this, you know, federal security app apparatus to stop it. Number one, because it's happening in the air, so it's not going to happen that the federal government stops it. And number two, that passengers kind of know what's going on and can make that intervention on their own. So it's really this whole system designed to rather ineffectively stop something that's probably never going to happen again. And I do think there's a world where you see something that's maybe 80 to 90% effective, but maybe 50% cheaper. Whether that's federal or whether that's private, I think that's another debate. But I think everyone will agree that the current system is really just both ineffective and inefficient.
- [23:18]
Henry
So what is the Darrell Campbell solution on security?
- [23:21]
Darrell Campbell
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. So the first one is I actually do like the idea of privatization, but only if it's done in a very specific way. So in other words, there is a privatization program today at tsa and it's called the Security Partnership Program, or spp. And it basically says you can work with a contractor, but you have to do exactly the same thing that TSA does. You have to pay them the exact same benefits. And by the way, you're still on the hook for making a profit for your investors. And that's really why very few airports have actually gone through with it. Some of them do well, like San Francisco. Some of them are so small that they don't really have. They don't really provide a good enough case study for it. But I think what's actually the right approach is to say, okay, you've got these high level principles where we want to keep airplanes from having security threats. We want to make sure that terrorists don't get on our airplanes, and we want people to be efficiently moved through security. But then you're not dictating. You have to have a scanner and you have to have an ID station here. And you have to do these exact six or seven things. You're actually unleashing one of the advantages of privatization, which is innovation and trying new things. And then you can get people to really kind of figure out what works best to stop the things that we're actually trying to stop. I think number two is, is just around fairness and kind of the general applicability of it. Right now, a Lot of security screening is just kind of, you know, a tso, a Transportation Security officer, has a hunch, and they talk to someone, they say, hey, this person needs additional screening. And that's actually not very effective. Nor is it really in compliance with the idea of law enforcement that it's equally applied to everybody. We know there are thousands of cases of racial profiling. Most famously in 2017, TSA officers stopped a Canadian government minister who just happens to look. Look suspicious, quote, unquote, because he had a beard and he was wearing a turban. And it turns out he did that because he's a devout Sikh. And they're, you know, they've got turbans as a religious form of religious expression, but they didn't really understand that. They just thought, hey, this guy is brown and looks like, you know, he's. He's not complying with us for reasons we don't understand. So there is that idea that how do you get the human element out of it and actually enforce these laws efficiently? One of the things that I've seen that works really well is the sniffer dogs, where they take two seconds to sniff you for explosives and you can get on through the line. And that doesn't require an ID check and a body scan and all these other more intrusive and less efficient things. So I think there are ways to make security more effective, but I think a lot of the opportunity is still untapped. And frankly, most security solutions are focused on the compliance aspect rather than the actual providing an enhanced security environment for people. And I think we don't even know what the future might look like. We just know that it doesn't look like it does today.
- [26:30]
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- [27:00]
Brene Brown
Hi, I'm Brene Brown.
- [27:01]
Henry
And I'm Adam Grant.
- [27:02]
Brene Brown
And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop, a podcast that's a
- [27:06]
Henry
place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning.
- [27:10]
Brene Brown
It's going to be fun. We rarely agree, but we almost never disagree.
- [27:15]
Henry
And we're always learning.
- [27:16]
Brene Brown
That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube. Or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.
- [27:26]
Version History Narrator
When you think of a phone, not a smartphone, but like a telephone, you almost certainly think of one particular device. This boxy thing that sat on your desk. It has a bunch of buttons on it. It has a handset that you pick up. It has a braided cable. You're thinking of a phone called the Western Electric 500. And for decades, it was absolutely everywhere in American homes. It was essentially illegal not to have it in your house if you had a phone. This week on Version History, our chat show about the best and worst and most interesting products in tech history, we're telling the story, story of the Western Electric 500, which is actually the story about the AT&T monopoly and how it fell apart. All that on version history, on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts.
- [28:11]
Henry
So you mentioned earlier that this gets political with the FAA and air traffic control, and I assume it's the same with the tsa, too. So. So what does that mean exactly? And what are the two parties, if it breaks down along party lines, what are they arguing for and who's right?
- [28:26]
Darrell Campbell
Well, it's really interesting. So on the Democrats side, they're primarily aligned with TSA as a Labor Organization. So TSA workers, all 50, 60,000 of them, belong to the federal government's primary union. And they're primarily concerned with protecting jobs, protecting wages, benefits, and creating some collective bargaining rights, which is totally fair. But I haven't seen the Democratic Party really rally around a vision for what an alternative would look like. On the flip side, the Republican Party kind of splits between the sort of neoconservatives who think that you should have a maximum security apparatus because terrorist threats are everywhere, and the kind of Heritage Foundation Project 2025 Wing, which is really more the classical libertarian that's focusing on privatization. In fact, one of the most surprising things about the Project 2025 document is they have two pages specifically on recommendations for the TSA, which seems like all the other stuff you hear about it is so far afield. PSA seems like small potatoes, but their main point is that the DHS is a big overreach of government powers, and we think we can get 20% or more efficiency by privatizing the budget. Now, they're not really specific on what that looks like, and I happen to think those proposals are, let's say, rosy, but it does seem like they're effectively advancing that agenda within the Trump administration. In fact, in the most recent budget proposal that I think came out last Friday, the Trump administration said that one of their goals with the next budget budget is to privatize airport security at a lot of smaller airports. So it clearly is gaining traction within the current administration.
- [30:08]
Henry
All right, let's talk about airports, because this is another area where Americans tend to be very frustrated sometimes with reason, especially when they leave the country and they land in this gleaming, beautiful airport that you might want to actually be the destination for your trip, because it's so amazing. And then you go to the old laguardia, for example, which was horrendous. But as a New Yorker, I will say that the new laguardia is astounding. It's beautiful. It's incredible to be there. So how did the new laguardia happen? And how do we modernize other airports, and not just the airports themselves, but the transport to and from the airport? Because another thing you go to Europe that's so nice right away is you just go downstairs and get on the train and you're in the middle of town instantly. Whereas here you have to take a car and it can be cumbersome and so forth. So what's the deal with it? Airports?
- [30:58]
Darrell Campbell
You know, LaGuardia is such an interesting example. In fact, I remember I was there the year before the renovation started, and quite literally, there was water leaking from the ceilings. There were, like, trash cans out. And then I went there for the first time post Reno, I think it was last year, and it's this beautiful. Like, it rivals Dubai or Singapore and some of the places, and they've got all these lounges and everything. Now, the interesting thing there is that that, yes, they put, I think it was a billion dollars or whatever into the renovation. But then almost immediately after that, you have an accident that happens because you don't have enough air traffic controllers. And you kind of see that there's the side of the airport that services the customer when they're on premise, versus the airside systems that are still in a lot of ways crumbling, or at least not up to the volume that they're seeing today. So I think one of the most interesting things about the post 911 securitization of airports in general is that it's created this captive audience that really has nothing to do but shop and eat. You know, once you're post security and you're conceptually willing to pay for a $20 Starbucks, like, the sky's the limit, and people will throw money to make it the nicest building and the nicest area you've ever looked at, but they're only going to do it when you're a captive passenger inside the airside terminal. So I think that that does tend to drive a lot of it. Now, what happens on the other side is that the airport authority, who's in charge of the building, does repurpose some of that money to things like, you know, Runway light improvements. But again, we go back to this weird world where the airport operates the property, but the FAA is actually responsible for tower maintenance. And it's not like the airport can just say, oh, here's $10,000, go buy a radar. That's actually not legal. And there's no kind of means for doing that at. So I think they've, they've built this system where they are actually making a profit on some part of the aviation system. And I think that is an untapped potential for finding these cash flows that the federal government isn't. But just the firewall between public and private tends to be a blocker there.
- [33:07]
Henry
So you mentioned something that is fascinating. You're suggesting that because of the enormous security apparatus that is the TSA and people have to get to the airport a couple of hours early and they zoom through and suddenly there's this, you've got all the time to just sit there and be in basically shopping world, that that is what is suddenly allowing everybody to invest so much money in the airports. And so in other words, there's a vested interest now in make us get to the airport earlier and earlier.
- [33:36]
Darrell Campbell
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- [33:37]
Henry
Make the GSA process even worse. Okay.
- [33:39]
Darrell Campbell
Yeah. You're, you're. It's, it's always difficult to just comprehend the number of people who have a financial advantage in not improving the system. And it's sometimes for reasons that, that you wouldn't even think about. Like, you and I are discussing it like it's a very cut and dried airport security situation. But you think about, just to use an example, the fancy duty free shop, like they want as many people in there for as long as possible so that they can potentially make a sale. And so they're not going to lobby against air traffic improvement or security improvement, but they are going to say, well, you know, the system's fine as it is, so we're not going to push very hard. And because a lot of these are part of these huge international conglomerates, they actually do have a lot of political pull that they're just not expressing directly. So it's not that the duty free company is necessarily lobbying for no change in airport security, but maybe the larger international parent is. And I think that's one thing that is kind of underappreciated about the modern airport system is that there's a lot of hands in the pot right now.
- [34:40]
Henry
And just going back to the FAA for a second. So would LaGuardia have happened if Congress had just simply increased the budget by a couple of billion dollars?
- [34:49]
Darrell Campbell
Hmm. I think there are a couple of levers that Congress could have pulled. Number one is definitely airport staffing. So, in other words, you had the same controller managing traffic and trying to deal with the fire department. There were two controllers and a supervisor on, I believe, which is kind of the minimum. It's technically within the federal rules, but more bodies means more people to handle this. And, you know, task saturation is a very real demonstrated impact on someone's ability to perform. So I think that does have something to do with it. But also, I mean, one of the most striking things about that is. So if you recall, there was another United plane that had an emergency. They wanted to go back to the gate, but United didn't have a gate open for them. So that's why they stayed on the Runway and dispatched a firefighter. That is a corporate decision on United's side to run as many flights into LaGuardia as possible and then not have the gate capacity to service every single one just by. Because LaGuardia is a profitable place, and people flying out of New York spend a lot of money on their flights, and so they're willing to sacrifice that passenger experience and that operational lift just to get another flight on the ground and another couple hundred thousand in revenue for that particular thing. So that has nothing to do with the faa. That's a corporate decision on United's part. And then there's just the basics of human error. There was a traffic control system that is basically like the equivalent of a traffic light that said to the fire truck, stop here, this is an active run. There's an airplane coming. The firefighters miss that. And that's just human error. That's gonna happen all the time. But the combination of relatively low staffing and this unusual environment where they're having to respond to an airplane that's not at the gates, and the fact that just it's nighttime and all these other things mean that the margins of safety were reduced enough to make that accident happen. And I think there's no universal fix for it to say that if they just had another million, we could have saved it. But there are these incremental things and kind of more conceptually, I think that's the hardest thing when you Talk about airport security is that there's no easy fixes and there's no kind of single solution that will change everything. Everything you do is just making 10 or 15 systems a little bit better so that there's more safety. And that's kind of where we are today. The opportunity for these big fixes was there in the 1950s, 1960s, but now we're really kind of getting into the very specialized and complex stuff and that's very hard to sell to both the public and politicians.
- [37:23]
Henry
Well, talk about the staffing, because that's the one that really rankles me as an American is when I read that we're understaffed. Look, we want to have good jobs in this country. These are good jobs. They're high skilled. I think they're pretty well paid. They're obviously incredible responsibility that goes along with it. And then when you read that we're understaffed 30% in a lot of areas. I mean, how can that be? Is that also political? Is that this whole we have to just get rid of the whole federal government and let's not even think about it, let's just fire everybody. Why? Why is that?
- [37:56]
Darrell Campbell
I think in the specific case of air traffic control, you actually do want the federal government involved, at least at the level of setting standards. You don't want, you know, 10 different companies with 10 different standards. That's how we got 9, 11, because the security company in Boston was just not holding people accountable. So I do think there's an advantage to having a national standard that's strict. Now the way that the FAA declared decides to run the training process, there's a couple of problems with it. I think the first one is that it just doesn't have the throughput to replace a lot of the air traffic controllers. So the FAA academy, it's in Oklahoma City, it's about three hours north of where I live. And it only takes a couple thousand people a year. But there's a huge wave of retirements that's happening right now that means they just cannot train people fast enough to replace them. So that's problem number one. Problem number two is you can't work at some of these super complex system like New York or Atlanta or D.C. unless you already have a lot of training elsewhere. So they are actually getting people out of the academy, but they're in places like, you know, Albuquerque, New Mexico or South Bend, Indiana, where, you know, they're working their way up. But there's no ready pool of replacements for the most complex areas in the country. And those happen to be major airline hubs. And then I think the third thing is it's just a very demanding job with a two year probationary period when you first get hired. And a lot of people just don't want to deal with that. If they can go and work for or a software engineering company where they can get twice the pay plus equity and not have to deal with that probationary period, it's just a little bit of an easier sell. So again, it's one of those things that's not one size fits all solution. But I do think pay would be an improvement. And I think just changing the training requirements so that you can help people ladder up to some of those most complicated ones will help with that. There's also one other historical element which is in 1981 there was this big air traffic controller strike and Ronald Reagan fired something like 20 or 30,000 air traffic controllers. Well, if you look at the replacements and kind of the hiring curve, we're actually in the middle of the post firing bubble where all of those people who were hired in that wave to replace the air traffic controllers are the ones who are retiring now. Whereas if the old air traffic controllers had been able to come back, you would have phased that out over multiple years. So I think there's also a weird historical quirk about our specific moment in
- [40:22]
Henry
the time, and I was startled when I was reading up to talk to you, that air traffic controllers are required to retire at 56. So a little bit horrified by that, given that I would have been put out to pasture many, many years ago if I were an air traffic controller. So, like, I mean, could we think about extending that?
- [40:40]
Darrell Campbell
Yeah.
- [40:41]
Henry
Have I really deteriorated to the point where I could have been a decent air traffic controller 10 years ago and I can't now?
- [40:46]
Darrell Campbell
I won't speak for you specifically, Henry, but I do think there's a lot of appetite to keep some of the more tenured people around. And we're actually seeing a little bit of that where are getting special waivers to stay on 56, 57, 58. But yeah, you think about pilots, the retirement age is 61. There are some cognitive physical deficits, but they don't kick in at 56. And while I think air traffic control is a uniquely stressful job, I kind of think a lot of these guys, men and women, can handle it longer than I think the federal requirement is. So I think that is actually one of the few easy things. Things.
- [41:22]
Henry
Thank you for standing up to us senior citizens. I totally appreciate it. All right, let's end on this perception issue. Nobody ever has anything good to say about air travel. I mean, it's just complain, complain, complain. Now it's all about, oh, my goodness, it's so much worse than it used to be. There's no leg room. I get charged for baggage I have, you know, I have to pay for everything extra. It's all the fees. I get duped when I'm searching for tickets. And it's so terrible because it costs so much money more. Why is it that we just complain, complain, complain, even though things certainly relative to history, are pretty good?
- [42:00]
Darrell Campbell
I think that's just human nature. And in fact, you know, I started my career at Amazon, and Jeff Bezos and his shareholder letters would always talk about how Amazon customers are divinely discontented, that it's actually a good thing that they're complaining about little things like service or the width of their seat or whatever, and not dying in a plane crash, to be blunt about it. I do think there's. I mean, you take the cost of an airplane ticket today versus 1971. I'm going to New York towards the end of this month. I'm probably going to pay about $400 round trip. You know, 1971, that same thing would have cost me the equivalent of 2,000 or $3,000, if not more. And if you want to shell out that much money for it today, you actually get a much better experience in terms of the amount of personal space you have, the pressurization of the airplane. So I think it's, you know, I don't mind the complaints, but I also think you shouldn't expect people to do it. Like, we should be saying, hey, how can we make economy class 10% better? Like, I don't mind that conversation at all.
- [43:04]
Henry
No, but it seems to me that what happens is it's just always the lowest price wins out. That's actually what people care about most. And you don't hear us complaining like, or celebrating, hey, I got $2 off. It's just I, I got the cheapest ticket and I didn't get the 7. 1970, you know, first class seat.
- [43:25]
Darrell Campbell
Yeah, you didn't get the, the grand piano up front. But I think that also goes to the difference between stated preference and revealed preference. Like, yes, people are complaining a lot more. They're also flying a lot more. And in fact, like, right now, there's probably a million people around the world in an airplane. Like, that is astounding to me. When you think about the volume that was happening even 50 years ago. It's just. It's just so incredible that you can decide right now I'm going to go to another part of the world and you can get there in 24 hours or so.
- [43:52]
Henry
All right, so actually, let's end on. I'm even looking forward. So is anything cool company coming? Like, are there any cool new planes? Are we going to get super fast planes? Are they going to have all these, you know, great big windows? Like what's coming?
- [44:04]
Darrell Campbell
Yeah.
- [44:04]
Henry
What do we look forward to?
- [44:05]
Darrell Campbell
So I think there's three main things. Number one is passenger comfort. The arrival of carbon fiber really made it possible to pressurize airplanes more. And you do feel a lot less exhausted when you're flying on a Dreamliner than you did with the seven. So I think that's one part. I think the second one is engine efficiency. There are some really wacky designs out there from Airbus and even from Boeing where they're doing like weird engines on pylons and propellers without a cowling. And those are supposed to be super efficient. That should drive the price down a little more to kind of keep people both environmentally happy and cost consciously happy. And then I think the third thing is you do get this outer edge of things like the supersonic boom airliner that can get you to New York to London in two hours. I don't know that that's going to have a ton of commercial use because people don't really mind spending five hours versus two, but it is. There's always going to be that segment that just is so time poor that they need those three hours. And so I think you're actually going to see this explosion of new classes and new kinds of experiences that wasn't there even 20 years ago. I mean, you think about the Emirates shower in the sky, like that was literally inconceivable even as late as 2001. And now it's something that people are coming to expect. So I think it's. It's both. Expectation. Yeah, some of us, yeah, me personally, I have never. Some of us will never experience it well. And, you know, I was on a flight a couple of years ago where someone was complaining because the airplane got switched, that it didn't have the showers because they. So some people do. Like, it's not just hypothetical, but, you know, for the rest of us, maybe we'll experience that once in our lifetime. But the range of options is going to be so much more interesting in the next couple of years. Hopefully not for the better or the worst. So that you have people literally stacked on top of each other. But. But, you know, if there's a market niche, someone's going to fill it.
- [45:52]
Henry
I liked those schematics of being able to sleep in economy double decker. Yeah, the bunk beds are cool.
- [45:59]
Darrell Campbell
You know, after you get over your first visceral reaction, you think, okay, maybe there are some advantages to it, so I wouldn't dismiss it outright.
- [46:07]
Henry
Darrell, it's great to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming.
- [46:10]
Darrell Campbell
All right, Henry, we'll see you next time.
- [46:11]
Henry
All right, thanks. Bye, Sam.