TSA Lines Getting Out of Hand

0:00David Sheppardson covers transportation, autos, and aviation for Thomas Reuters. He was with our great Detroit News in the past, and we're happy to welcome him back to focus with Paul W. Smith. David, I keep forgetting to ask this. Didn't we just use to refer to Reuters as Reuters? It is still Reuters. Yes, so 20 years ago Reuters got bought by Thompson in Canada. Our parent comies Thompson Reuters, but you just call it Reuters. Our emails say Thompson Reuters. It's annoying and people don't understand it. Well, it's especially annoying because I've been calling it Thomas Reuters. So it's never been Thomas Reuters, and I wondered just who that is, Thomas Reuters. But anyway, so it, Thompson Reuters, but I think I'm going to go with you, David. Let's just call it Reuters. That's the iconic name Reuters. Love it. Exactly. Alright. Are the TSA lines? I read somewhere they were, they were not getting longer or that, that maybe even getting

1:05shorter, but I don't know what's the very latest. So it's a mixed bag, right? So much like the remember back to last fall, we had the 43 day shutdown. We saw air traffic controllers calling out sick, like today, TSA officers at different airports, right? So we know over the weekend, New Orleans and Houston hobby and terrible lines all the way to the garage. I mean, we're talking three, four hours. And we're still seeing some sporadic places where there are higher absences. The TSA today set about 300 of the 50,000 officers have quit since this shutdown began. This Friday is the first day in this shutdown. They're going to get a zero pay paycheck. So they're going to look at that stuff. And I do have concerns that this weekend, if you've got TSA folks who got to buy childcare, whatever could call and sick over the weekend, because look, it's, it's hard. I mean, these folks are making roughly $2 an hour, $42,000 a year before, over time. So they're not getting paid super well and a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck.

2:08And like many people, it's hard to go without your pay. Of course it is. None of us would want to do that nor would we or should we be expected to do this. And because the primary institutional media are filled with Democrats and backers of what the Democrats are doing, they won't say what it is. This DHS shutdown is because the Democrats won't open up the money that they should get and that they voted on in a bipartisan way in the past. But they've looked at this as a way to get the president in trouble because they haven't been able to figure it out by coming up with better ideas on their own. So they keep thinking, okay, we're going to cause the TSA to people are leaving. People won't come to work Friday. They get their first no paycheck whatsoever in the lines. And people are going to be mad at the president. So that's what we're doing. But folks, don't be mad at the president. Be mad at the Democrats for not going along with a bipartisan solution.

3:10They had agreed to in the past. I'm sorry you're not hearing that from the lame stream media, but you're not. Meanwhile, since I have you here, can I ask you a question that I just found to be fascinating and you, you probably have an answer. And by the way, yep, spring break is coming and yep, believe me, the DHS officials are very worried that there could be more TSA employees who are going to leave. They need to, they need to pay their bills. Nobody is saying to them, oh, you don't have to make your car payment. Oh, you don't have to make your apartment rent. Oh, you don't have to pay for your mortgage because what the heck the Democrats won't give you your money. We understand. Oh, these guys have to, these men and women have to find other jobs. It's bad enough they had to have two jobs in the first place. But anyway, I got that off my chest. Here's the question. And I asked my producer about this, Mike Parsons, neither one of his had an answer. I thought it was unusual. When I read, and you're going to help me understand this, this being David Sheperts

4:15and covering transportation autos and aviation for Reuters, why would jet blue ask the FAA to shut them down? Why couldn't jet blue just say, we have a problem, we're going to have to shut down. Have they avoid some liability or what was the point of them? I thought they asked the FAA to ground them. They did. Yeah, they did. And this doesn't happen that often. I'd say about twice a year, United had something happen about six months ago, Southwest. They're almost always the same thing, some sort of IT problem. And I don't, you know, and you're right, as far as I know, there's no regulatory requirement, but I do think it's a good backstop to prevent any plane from going out. Now, you're right. They're the ones that control the planes. They have the dispatchers, the gate agents, the piles, and so on.

5:17You would think you could just send an email to everybody saying, hey, no flights. And so, you know, maybe this is just a way of ensuring that nobody leaves. You know, a lot of times it's about, you know, maybe it could be a waiting balance issue, like the pilot, something's wrong with the computer system that we can't, you have assurance that the plane is good to go or, you know, so usually it's some weird technical issue because a lot of times the airlines will choose kind of late at night to do a reboot. So it does happen most times, like the United want to happen overnight where there are not many flights. It doesn't affect too many people. This one with JetBlue I think happened around midnight, maybe it was about 2 a.m. roughly. So it didn't, it didn't, it didn't affect you too much, but you're right. It does freak people out. And again, it speaks to Americans. People are obsessed with aviation, obsessed with what happens is on airplanes, right? Things that happen on an airplane would never make news anywhere else, but, you know, people love to fly, they love to read about it when things go wrong.

6:20And like my parents and other people, they love to freak out before they go on a plane, right? Do you think a lot of coverage is about people worrying about their flight or their spring break trip or whatever, which there's a lot of play. I mean, it's difficult for some of us to leave the flying to the pilots, you know, we get out of the plane. We don't turn left to go into the cockpit. We turn right to go to a seat and we're completely without any power at all. That's tougher. You know, it's like, I don't even like, although I do let Kim drive more than I've ever let anyone else drive. I really feel I need that control, but be that as it may. So that's a good explanation. And I understand the ground stop was lifted about 40 minutes after it was imposed, a brief system outage that had been resolved. It occurs to me, jet blue, I mean, I've been around a long time. So it seems hard to believe. It seems like jet blue just started, but they're over 25 years old now. And yeah, I might have been in New York. No, it was a little while longer than I was in New York, but they headquartered in New

7:23York City. The flagship terminal was at JFK. How are they doing overall? How is jet blue? Is it considered a successful airline? Well, no, I mean, they're struggling. They are definitely struggling. You know, there's been a lot of merger talks, right? There was a whole, you know, potential merger with spirit, right? And, you know, I think, you know, the problem is the big three keep getting bigger and bigger, right? You know, American Delta in United. And it's hard. It's hard and you're smaller. You'll get spirits. It was just in bankruptcy again. And jet blue was your right. It's the only new successful airline last 25 years, but they've still got to figure out. They have a new partnership in United, right? You can earn miles on both, but it's still unclear, could they murder somebody? You know, what's in their future? But they're definitely having some financial issues for sure. They, unlike the other airlines, they have not been making profits, you know, for quite a number of quarters. I mean, eight or nine quarters of this coin. So it, but it, it seemingly, I mean, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it would be who've one of those big three to buy them.

8:27They would, they wouldn't need to really, I guess. Well, you got gates. There's very strong south Florida. They're very strong in New York and Boston, like, so they have some attractive assets. So, you know, you could see a united, potentially interested in buying them, you know, economies of scale. What have you? Hmm, interesting. Well, I got to tell you, we deal with the folks from Delta a lot. In fact, we refer to them as the official airline of the Paul W. Smith show and family. I even told the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Deffy, that when he was on that too long ago, I really, I think that at Bastion's doing a great job at the top, a great job. And then we work with Nick Demarco and Hussein and all these people that we work with are all good people. So we hope and we are happy to see that you refer to them as one of the top three. And I'd have to agree with you. They seem to do a great job and certainly a great to airline for the trade.

9:27You know, they're getting a lot of money, you know, they're adding flights, expanding. They're right now. Those are the two guys really on top American, very large, but it's having a share of struggles as well. As well. So you broke off a little bit. You're saying united and Delta? Are you both very profitable adding flights? American is having some struggles. They're, they're also large, but definitely Delta and United are right now sort of leading the industry in terms of profitability expansion. Nice to have a guy back who used to be with us at the Detroit News. Now with the famous iconic Reuters, David Shepardson, who covers transportation, autos and aviation for Reuters. Thanks for being with us, David. We'll talk again and look forward to it. Thanks for having me. We continue in focus as we approach 130. as we approach 130. The strategy is we8, we8, we8, y1-30. The strategy is we8, we8, y1-30.