Speaker 1: The FAA confirmed that yet another system outage occurred at
Speaker 1: the facility that handles flights in and out of Newark
Speaker 1: Liberty International Airport. And uh, why not? That's where we
Speaker 1: begin our terror in the skies flights zero Nier. You're alert,
Speaker 1: day off, Roger, get off my plane, Roderick Rodgers? What's
Speaker 1: our victor? Victor? Enough is enough? I have a hand.
Speaker 1: Put these multi fighting snakes on this money. It's Gary
Speaker 1: and Shannon's Terror in the Skies O k FO. So
Speaker 1: the FAA is investigating a brief radio system outage at
Speaker 1: the Philly Air Traffic Control Center that is responsible for
Speaker 1: handling flights at Newark International Newark Liberty International Airport there
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. This is not good. It doesn't get
Speaker 1: much better when I play the sound for you. Sorry
Speaker 1: about that. I thought United had cleared well before that
Speaker 1: for a moment and I get at the other United.
Speaker 1: Luis will get you up, went man. Why does he
Speaker 1: have to get the other United out of the way? Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Because the radio went out the radar
Speaker 1: frequency again, Okay. The FAA said the control tower lost
Speaker 1: radio frequencies for two seconds yesterday morning at about eleven thirty,
Speaker 1: New Jersey time. Despite that everything remained safely separated. There
Speaker 1: were no big deals. But this is the fourth time
Speaker 1: since April twenty eighth, the fourth time that there has
Speaker 1: been a system outage of some duration at the Philly
Speaker 1: Air Traffic Control Center that's responding for these responsible for
Speaker 1: these flights to come into Newark. After the April incident,
Speaker 1: there was a second outage on May ninth that interrupted
Speaker 1: communications for about ninety seconds. There were more flight disruptions.
Speaker 1: There was a third outage two days after that which
Speaker 1: halted flights. Staffing shortages linked to the April incident led
Speaker 1: to widespread delays. They've been having construtroduction issues with that
Speaker 1: Newark airport that we've told you about many times. In
Speaker 1: the first couple of incidents, both April twenty eighth and
Speaker 1: in May ninth, they had really bad weather. It was
Speaker 1: very overcast and foggy in that area, so they had
Speaker 1: other natural delays that were going to occur. Sean Duffy
Speaker 1: is the Secretary of Transportation. He said earlier this month
Speaker 1: that we are in the midst of upgrading our air
Speaker 1: traffic control system, but it is going to take some time.
Speaker 1: They include updating the system with new software, with new equipment,
Speaker 1: and he says that this revamp is going to cost
Speaker 1: tens of billions of dollars. Right now, we know that
Speaker 1: the FAA system relies on technology that was outdated before
Speaker 1: I graduated from high school, and that in some cases
Speaker 1: the FAA has had to resort to buying equipment on eBay,
Speaker 1: replacement parts on eBay, or even making them on their
Speaker 1: own using three printers because some new components are unavailable
Speaker 1: for that same outdated equipment. Obviously, there are problems with
Speaker 1: the shortage of air traffic controllers in the US. More
Speaker 1: than ninety percent of the nation's airport towers are considered
Speaker 1: to be inadequately staffed. They fall short of standards that
Speaker 1: were set by the working group from the FAA and
Speaker 1: the Controllers Union that put them together. So no word
Speaker 1: today on an outage near Newark, but not good because
Speaker 1: yet another one has prompted problems and delays and they
Speaker 1: will continue at Newark for some time. Nearby up in
Speaker 1: that same area, there was a close call at LaGuardia
Speaker 1: Airport between two commercial jets, currently under investigation by the
Speaker 1: FAA and NTSP. This is one of many of the
Speaker 1: close calls, the go arounds, and the accidents that has
Speaker 1: prompted calls for changes to that aviation system, not just
Speaker 1: air traffic control, but the way the FAA op rates
Speaker 1: on a very general basis. So this happened right about
Speaker 1: twelve thirty in the morning on May sixth, and air
Speaker 1: traffic controller canceled the takeoff clearance for American Eagle flight
Speaker 1: forty seven thirty six because a United flight was taxing
Speaker 1: on that same runway, so he had to yell. The
Speaker 1: controller had to yell brickyard forty seven thirty six. Stop
Speaker 1: Brickyard is the call sign they use for republic airways,
Speaker 1: and then rejected takeoff runway thirteen. Said the pilot, Sorry
Speaker 1: about that. I thought United had cleared well before that,
Speaker 1: according to the controller. So the United flight that was
Speaker 1: coming in that evening from Houston carrying one hundred and
Speaker 1: seven passenger six crew members, the planes were about a
Speaker 1: quarter mile apart when the flight that was taking off
Speaker 1: hit the brakes, and the FAA said, it's also investigating
Speaker 1: another like I said, radio outage there at Newark. These
Speaker 1: close calls like this, yeah, they happen. One way I
Speaker 1: heard it. To describe today is they need to stop
Speaker 1: calling them near misses because that makes it sound like
Speaker 1: they were separated. But if you called it, if you
Speaker 1: just changed the nomenclature, if all you did was say
Speaker 1: we had a near hit at LaGuardia, that it would
Speaker 1: have changed pretty significantly and in fact, would make people
Speaker 1: think differently about how dire the situation is. When it
Speaker 1: comes to the tens of thousands of flights that operate
Speaker 1: throughout the United just the United States, the tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of flights that operate in the United States each
Speaker 1: and every day, how many of these close calls are there?
Speaker 1: I'm surprised there are not more. But again, some instances
Speaker 1: like this one. Today's the ninth, today's the twentieth, and
Speaker 1: we're only finding out about it two weeks later. Unless
Speaker 1: you were the pilot or the air traffic controller, this
Speaker 1: stuff isn't advertised very often. So that's just a couple.
Speaker 1: On Saturday, a door dash driver made his way onto
Speaker 1: Chicago O'Hare International Airport grounds. Now I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: driving through the terminal, I mean through a restricted area,
Speaker 1: and they said may have accidentally driven over taxiways while
Speaker 1: trying to find his way back out of the airport.
Speaker 1: Thirty six year old driver making a delivery. He accessed
Speaker 1: the airside areas how they referred to it, and you
Speaker 1: know who caught him or you know who noticed him.
Speaker 1: The air traffic controllers in the tower saw this unauthorized
Speaker 1: vehicle making its way through secured parts of the airport.
Speaker 1: They may have crossed multiple internal roads and potentially even
Speaker 1: taxiways before they were noticed by the air traffic controllers.
Speaker 1: Airport authority were able to intercept this guy. They questioned him.
Speaker 1: He said he was completely there by mistake, no big deal,
Speaker 1: accidentally drove to within that secured area, no malicious intent,
Speaker 1: no charges, no citations anything. Door Dash also had to
Speaker 1: come out. They acknowledged the event. They're actively reviewing the
Speaker 1: details around exactly what happened. This is not the first
Speaker 1: time that this has happened. Amazingly, you drive around Lax,
Speaker 1: you drive around Burbank, it's hard to find a place
Speaker 1: to get in that even looks like you could get
Speaker 1: in if you're unless you're going through the normal concourse
Speaker 1: in front of the airport. A former air traffic controller
Speaker 1: said that this was pretty frightening. This guy also flew
Speaker 1: business jets emphasized how dangerous it could have been, because
Speaker 1: he says, imagine if this had been at night. Imagine
Speaker 1: if this was harder for air traffic controllers to identify
Speaker 1: that as an unauthorized vehicle. Yeah, you got headlines rolling around,
Speaker 1: but you got headlights for other vehicles that are traveling
Speaker 1: within that airside portion of the airport that are fine.
Speaker 1: Headlights all looked the same in the dark, he said,
Speaker 1: And it could have been really, really bad. Chicago's major
Speaker 1: airports experienced several similar breaches. In April of last year,
Speaker 1: a city owned vehicle went on an active taxiway at
Speaker 1: O'Hare without prior clearance that prompted a near miss, if
Speaker 1: you want to call it that an incursion with a
Speaker 1: regional aircraft. That was one of at least three runway
Speaker 1: or taxiway access violations involving ground vehicles at O'Hare during
Speaker 1: that year. Chicago Midway, there was just in February Chicago
Speaker 1: Midway there was a flex Jet Challenger three point fifty
Speaker 1: business jet that crossed an active runway without authorization and
Speaker 1: if you remember that, that forced a Southwest flight to
Speaker 1: abort its landing just a few seconds before a touchdown.
Speaker 1: But okay, let's send the terrans in the skies with
Speaker 1: a positive story. Shally, there's a one from Ohio who's
Speaker 1: had a chance encounter with a handsome pilot, if you will.
Speaker 1: Tanya is her name, not even going to try her
Speaker 1: last name because it doesn't make sense. It's just a
Speaker 1: bunch of letters, she says. Every time I tell the story,
Speaker 1: people think I'm making it up. She's flying home with
Speaker 1: her family to Cleveland. She catches this guy checking her
Speaker 1: out while she's at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Sees that this guy has a pilot's uniform on Hello,
Speaker 1: and that he's a head taller than everybody else. Hello. Hello.
Speaker 1: She didn't think anything of it until she gets onto
Speaker 1: her flight Frontier and sees that this guy, Wesley, was
Speaker 1: on the same plane as he was in uniform. She
Speaker 1: initially thought, oh, that's our pilot, realized he was actually
Speaker 1: off duty. He's just deadheading to a different flight headed
Speaker 1: to Ohio. He gave Kanya's nephew a wave as she
Speaker 1: was carrying the kid down the aisle to her seat
Speaker 1: toward the back of the plane. She then didn't interact
Speaker 1: with him for the rest of the flight until they land.
Speaker 1: When he approaches her with a note, she said, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in a row towards the back. About twenty minutes
Speaker 1: before landing, I got a tap on my shoulder and
Speaker 1: it's that guy handing me a napkin. I made my
Speaker 1: mom and my sister read. At first, I was freaking out.
Speaker 1: This message read again, written on a napkin of a
Speaker 1: frontier airline's flight. Hi, I'm sure you get notes like
Speaker 1: this all the time, but I would love to take
Speaker 1: you out to dinner and get to know you. If
Speaker 1: that's something you'd be up for, let me know, and
Speaker 1: then he dropped his digits. She later learned the pilot
Speaker 1: had never asked out anyone before, let alone somebody on
Speaker 1: a plane, and had to be hyped up by one
Speaker 1: of the flight attendants who helped him right on the napkin.
Speaker 1: She said. She next to the guy the next day
Speaker 1: and they have been together ever since. So you can
Speaker 1: find love in the air.