Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s12e13 Episode Script
Air Traffic Control
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
We learned RFK's "MAHA" report
on children's health
cited studies that don't exist,
eight giant snake statues appeared
in Geneva to draw attention
to the dangers of,
you'll never guess, snakes,
and Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill"
continued its way through Congress,
despite strong opposition to some
of its cuts to programs like Medicaid.
Senator Joni Ernst was actually
confronted about those
at a town hall this week,
and her response was bold.
People will die!
Well, we all are going to die, so.
For heaven's sakes.
For heaven's sakes, folks.
Saying "we're all gonna die"
into a microphone
is already a pretty damning summation
of Republican politics.
But her casual tone there
also made it seem like
she might've just planted
a bomb in that room.
Trump spent much of his week
dishing out pardons to supporters,
continuing a trend that started
on day one of his presidency,
when he pardoned over 1.500
January 6th rioters.
On Monday, he pardoned
this former sheriff,
the day before he was supposed
to report to jail,
on a pretty open-shut case.
It took a rural Virginia jury
in the heart of Trump country
just two hours to convict
former Sheriff Scott Jenkins,
a longtime vocal Trump supporter,
of federal bribery and fraud charges
in December for accepting tens
of thousands of dollars in cash
in exchange for badges
for wealthy businessmen.
Prosecutors argued some exchanges
of cash were caught on video
from people who paid
to be deputized for the perks,
including to skip the TSA line, get
earlier access to the Covid vaccine,
avoid getting traffic tickets,
and in one case,
to help a felon
get his gun rights back.
Now, you should know, it turns out
those aren't real perks.
They're just things
these rich guys tried to get
from flashing their new badges.
But I do love the idea that they think
that it gets you whatever you want.
Yeah, you get to skip the TSA line,
unlimited free entry to Six Flags,
early access
to the Nintendo Switch 2,
a Hidden Immunity Idol
to be used at any Tribal Council,
and late check-out
and free continental breakfast.
And that is anywhere you want,
by the way.
You could get a free continental
breakfast at Old Navy if you wanted.
They have to give it to you.
You're a deputy sheriff!
Trump's pardon attorney seemed
to sum things up on Monday,
tweeting simply,
"No MAGA left behind,"
something borne out by Trump
also pardoning John Rowland,
a former Republican governor
convicted in an election fraud case,
and Michael Grimm, a former
Republican congressman
convicted of felony tax evasion.
Quick side note:
he once threatened a reporter
who'd asked him about separate
campaign finance allegations,
saying, "I'll break you in half.
Like a boy."
Which is such a weird way
to threaten someone.
Why was that
your top-of-mind example?
If the category on "Family Feud"
was "name something breakable"
and a contestant answered,
"A boy",
Steve Harvey would give his signature
confused stare for 20 straight minutes.
Trump's now pardoned
or granted clemency
to most of the Republican congressmen
convicted of felonies in 21st century.
But his pardons have also extended
to his financial supporters.
Because last month,
he pardoned Paul Walczak,
a nursing home executive who'd been
convicted after allegedly withholding
more than 10 million dollars from
the paychecks of the nurses,
doctors, and others who worked
at his facilities,
using the money to buy, among
other things, a 2 million yacht.
It's an almost cartoonishly evil crime,
making him an odd person
to single out for a pardon,
although this week, we learned
there was an extenuating circumstance.
The Trump administration pardoned
Paul Walczak after his mother,
Elizabeth Fago, attended a 1 million
per plate fundraising dinner
for the president's super PAC.
Three weeks after the dinner,
the president signed the pardon,
getting Walczak out
of an 18-month prison sentence
and a 4 million restitution payment.
It's true. She paid a million dollars
for a dinner, and suddenly,
her son got pardoned,
and out of paying 4 million back
to the people he stole from.
And the family seemed to implicitly
acknowledge the quid pro quo,
posting this image of mother and son,
MAGA'ed up, and captioned,
"'The righteous person
faces many troubles,"
"but the Lord comes to the rescue
each time. Psalm 34:19."
Fun fact: if you keep reading that
chapter, Psalm 34:20 says,
"By the way, when I say 'righteous'
I obviously don't mean people"
"who steal money from nursing home
staff and blow it on party boats,"
"just so we're fucking clear."
It's oddly specific,
but that's what you get when you read
the King James version.
And Trump still wasn't done.
Because on Wednesday,
he pardoned reality TV stars
Todd and Julie Chrisley,
who'd been sentenced
to 12 and seven years, respectively,
for some pretty flagrant misconduct.
For nearly a decade, the couple
portrayed themselves
as glamorous
self-made real estate tycoons
on the hit show
"Chrisley Knows Best".
Prosecutors said their life
was built on a lie,
calling them "career swindlers
who have made a living"
"from jumping from one fraud
scheme to another",
as they defrauded banks of more
than 30 million dollars,
stiffing vendors and dodging taxes,
using the money on luxury cars,
homes and designer clothes.
Yeah, these were some major crimes
committed by the stars
of "Chrisley Knows Best".
And if you've never seen it,
just know it centers around a couple
that answers the question:
what if Paula Deen had two
kids that fucked each other?
The Chrisleys were pardoned
after their daughter Savannah
made multiple appeals,
including appearing on
Lara Trump's Fox News show,
and even speaking at the RNC,
where she said this.
Justice, it's supposed to be blind.
But today,
we have a two-faced justice system.
Just look at what they're doing
to President Trump.
Donald J. Trump
has only one conviction that matters
and that is his conviction
to make America great again.
Okay, first, I think you're off
by around 33 counts there, Savannah.
But secondly, it is brave for her
to go out there and do that.
Not to suck up to Trump in
an utterly shameless manner,
but to do it while dressed like
the head of the PTA
who asked her hairstylist for
the "electrocuted Nancy Grace".
That is the genuinely brave part.
And look, presidential pardons
are conceptually a good thing.
They can correct
gross miscarriages of justice
and spare one turkey a year from
death in a cute little ceremony,
while a different turkey
is murdered off-camera,
wondering what it did wrong.
But in a country where there've been
many horrifying miscarriages of justice,
it is infuriating to see
an administration pardoning
flagrantly guilty people,
just because they sucked up
to the president or gave him money.
But I guess that's how
it's gonna be for the next few years,
if you're a Trump supporter, you
get to slip through the justice system
like you've got a FastPass
to Disneyland,
and for everyone else,
if I may paraphrase
Iowa's favorite junior senator
slash-angel of death,
what're you all complaining about,
you're all gonna die anyway.
And now, this.
And Now: Dagen McDowell
Will Not Curse on Television.
Let her rip, Dagen.
Let her rip, you better be careful.
I'll just try
to not curse on live television.
'Cause I'm trying not to curse.
I'm not gonna curse.
I would curse,
but it's 6:03 in the morning.
Clay, take it from here because
I only have curse words.
I'm just shaking my head
'cause I'm really trying not to curse.
I'm trying not to curse.
I was gonna curse.
I'm stifling, because I don't
wanna curse and get fired.
Dagen, have you ever gone
to Times Square during New Year's?
Curse word, curse word, curse
word, curse word, no.
happens at 2:46 AM.
I didn't have to give
a flying flip what I look like.
What? I did not curse.
I said "flying flip".
For more than a decade,
Facebook hasn't given a flying flip.
They really don't give a flying flip.
He doesn't give a flip.
Flying flip.
We don't give a flying flip.
Stop giving a flying flip.
Flippin' Foo Fighters concert.
I did go to an all-girls southern
school for a few years
and you don't want to hang out
with those bitches.
Moving on.
Our main story concerns air travel.
Some favorite methods include
planes, hot air balloons,
those old doohickeys that go
chugga-chugga and then fall apart,
and of course, befriending the birds.
The safety of air travel
has made headlines in recent years,
thanks to incidents like these.
10 days ago in San Diego,
a Citation business jet
nearly landed
on top of a Southwest 737.
In Austin last February,
a FedEx plane nearly landed
on a Southwest flight,
both cleared
for the same runway.
And this photo taken from a JetBlue
cockpit landing in Boston
as a business jet suddenly pulled onto
the same runway without permission.
Well, that is terrifying.
Planes should definitely
not be landing on top of each other
and I say that knowing
that there's a non-zero chance
Tom Cruise will hear and immediately
greenlight a new "Mission Impossible"
to do exactly that himself.
I am not saying
that he's trying to die on camera,
I'm just saying the only way Tom Cruise
passes away peacefully in his bed
is if the bed is being dropped
into an active volcano
to somehow save
the "live moviegoing experience".
Now, while those stories
are obviously alarming,
it is important to say, large,
fatal commercial airline crashes
are extremely rare,
and commercial flying is still
the safest way to travel by far.
And one major reason for that
is air traffic controllers,
who, as this recruitment video
points out,
are really the unsung
heroes of the skies.
Millions take to the skies every day,
and behind their safe flights
is a hidden world that few ever see.
Orchestrating a symphony of aircraft
with expertise and precision,
air traffic controllers
are the guardians of the air.
It's kind of an adventure from start
to finish, your entire shift.
You never know
what's coming your way
and that's what makes it exciting.
It's a fun challenge to me.
The harder the challenge for me,
makes it feel like
the greater the victory.
We think kind of three steps ahead
and then we have like nine backup
plans to those three steps ahead.
Yeah, it's a lot!
Air traffic controllers have
to be constantly vigilant.
It's not like a normal job
where you start a task,
then check Reddit for a few hours,
then go back to it,
but then it's lunch,
then you start the task again,
but then you need a coffee,
then you get sucked into
a conversation with fuckin' Derek,
so you vent to your pal Jeanine
about how much Derek sucks.
Then you go back to work,
then you see Jeanine laughing
with fuckin' Derek about something
and you think, "Wait, are Jeanine
and Derek friends? Oh, shit."
Then it's 6:00 PM
and whatever you had to do
really feels more
like a tomorrow thing anyway.
Unlike that, air traffic controllers
actually have to get shit done.
Together, they ensure the safety
of about two million passengers per day.
But as you've undoubtedly noticed,
there've been signs that our system
is under extreme strain,
like this story from last month
about massive delays at Newark.
Monday's bad weather complicated
an air traffic control staffing
nightmare that started last Monday.
After a number of system outages,
controllers' screens essentially
went dark for up to 90 seconds,
losing the ability to track
aircraft at a key facility
handling traffic
in and out of Newark.
It was a breaking point
for about a half dozen controllers
who requested trauma leave
due to the working conditions.
Yeah, it was so bad, some
controllers took trauma leave.
And I really hope
they spent that time recovering
in a place more comforting
than Newark,
very much the New Jersey
of places in New Jersey.
That's not all. In January, a passenger
jet and a military helicopter
collided near Reagan Airport,
killing 67 people.
That happened just days
after Trump's inauguration,
and he rose to meet the moment
with his characteristic empathy
and poetic turn of phrase.
I guess the helicopter was high
and we'll find out
exactly what happened.
But the odds, even if you had
nothing, if you had nobody,
the odds of that happening
are extremely small.
You go to a driving range in golf
and you're hitting balls,
hundreds of balls,
thousands of hours, I never see
a ball hit another ball.
Balls going up all over the place,
you never see 'em hit.
It was amazing that that could happen.
There were a lot of mistakes made,
and it should have never happened.
But regardless of that,
it's amazing that it happened.
You know, it's hard to know
what to focus on there,
the phrase "even if you had
nothing, if you had nobody",
which sounds like a Tim McGraw
song that'd play
during the credits of "Trolls 4:
For Whom the Bell Trolls",
or comparing a deadly aviation disaster
to a fluke golfing event.
Who among us hasn't been on a plane
during rough turbulence,
wondering if the worst is about
to happen, and thought,
"You know, this is just like
when the president's hitting"
"hundreds of beautiful golf balls
at one of his many high-class resorts."
"They almost never hit each other,
and if they did, it would be amazing."
And while the investigation
into that crash is ongoing,
the preliminary report suggested
that, among many other problems,
there was a shortage
of controllers that night,
with one person doing both helicopter
and local flight control, combined.
And just two months later, there was
another close call at that same airport,
after which it emerged
that a supervisor in the tower
had been accused of punching
another controller in the face,
leading the FAA to dispatch a team
of mental health professionals
to offer "confidential stress management
support" for controllers.
And all of this is bringing into sharp
focus just how stressful this job is,
and how understaffed
most facilities are.
While we'd ideally have over 14,000
certified professional controllers,
we currently have just
under 11,000,
and apparently, 99% of air traffic
control facilities in the U.S.
are operating below
recommended staffing levels.
Controllers have been sounding
the alarm about this for a while now.
At the end of 2023, it was reported
that "potentially dangerous close calls"
"had been happening
multiple times a week",
and some controllers argued
that the overtime
they were being forced to work
was a major safety issue.
We're tired of working six days a week.
We're tired of working 10-hour days.
NBC News has obtained
internal FAA documents,
first reported
by The New York Times,
detailing controllers' own anonymous
reporting of mistakes and exhaustion.
Among the entries, "Many employees
can be observed sleeping on the job",
"If I had not been fatigued, I may
have been able to recognize"
"the aircraft lined up for
the incorrect runway sooner"
and "I pray no one dies
due to controller fatigue."
Well, that's not great!
If I had to pick adjectives
to describe air traffic controllers
in charge of my flight,
"well-rested" would be
near the top of the list,
along with "highly-paid"
and possibly even
"erotically thrilled by the concept
of planes landing safely."
As long as we get there in one piece,
I don't really care what
the hand under the desk is doing.
When you combine all of that with the
fact that air traffic control equipment
is shockingly outdated
and poorly maintained,
it's frankly a miracle our system
works as well as it does.
But we probably shouldn't be
running it on miracles.
So, given that, tonight,
let's talk about air traffic control,
the people who do it,
the conditions they work in
and what can be done to help them.
And let's start with the fact that,
in the early days of aviation,
air traffic controllers
weren't really necessary.
Flights were rare enough that most
operated during daylight hours
under the practice
of "see and be seen".
But by the late 1950s,
air traffic control started to look
much more like what we have today.
Flight 104 is on its way to Washington.
But the flight actually began
30 minutes ago,
when the co-pilot
filed the flight plan.
Within 12 seconds after the flight
plan is filed in the computer,
flight strips are being printed
for the Boston control center
departure controller and his assistant.
The strip is placed
in the proposed departure bay
well in advance
of the departure time,
allowing the controller plenty
of time for pre-planning.
Yes, the strip is placed
in the proposed departure bay
well in advance of the departure time,
at which point the metal bird
will take to the skies carrying
a pilot, a co-pilot,
a team of stewardesses,
and 100 alcoholic businessmen
who will make their jobs
a living hell.
Back then, radar was
used around airports,
but it wasn't used nationwide
until a disaster in 1956,
when two planes collided
over the Grand Canyon.
After that, Congress approved a major
upgrade of the nation's airway system
and created the FAA to take
responsibility for air traffic control.
And that led to the complex system
that we have today,
where a plane
flying across the country
will be handed off
among a series of control facilities.
As a plane pushes back from the gate,
a ground controller
taxis you to the runway.
Then, tower control handles
the aircraft that are taking off
and on final approach, typically
from the surface to 2,500 feet
and a five-mile radius
of the airport.
Then terminal radar approach control,
or TRACON controllers,
take over until the aircraft
is at about 18,000 feet
and handed off
to an en route controller.
Exactly.
There is a whole series of handoffs
that you never really think about
during a flight,
because they work pretty seamlessly,
leaving you free
to focus on important
plane questions, like,
"If I get up to go pee
will I miss the snack cart?"
and "If that guy doesn't put his
shoes on can I legally kill him?"
The answers, of course being,
"Yes"
and "No, but no jury
will convict you."
The point is,
in buildings all over the country,
people are directing tens
of thousands of planes each day,
which is a real challenge,
and for many,
it's an exciting and fulfilling job.
Here is one former controller
summing it up pretty well.
It is extremely difficult
to explain to people
how fast you have
to make decisions,
except to emergency
medical professionals.
It's 95% boring and routine.
It's 3% exciting and routine.
It's 1% exciting and a little like,
okay, this is not routine.
And it's 1% holy fuck!
Okay, first, I absolutely love her.
And second, we all have "holy fuck"
moments sometimes, don't we?
For instance, a lot of people in this
room now are probably thinking,
"Holy fuck, we could have
gone to see Hadestown,"
"but instead we're listening
to stats about air safety."
But when an air traffic controller
says it, the stakes are clearly higher.
And one major challenge
for controllers today
is that there simply aren't
enough of them.
We've actually been short-handed
for years now
and, as with so many things
on this show,
at least some of the blame
lies with Ronald Reagan.
In the early 1980s,
as air travel was booming,
the air traffic controllers' union was
pushing for improved staffing levels,
benefits and technology.
They backed Reagan as a candidate,
he'd promised to deliver on that,
but once he took office,
he failed to follow through,
and they went on strike. And in
response, Reagan hit back hard.
You can't sit and negotiate with
a union that's in violation of the law.
And their oath.
With those words, President Reagan
told the air traffic controllers
to be back in the towers
Wednesday morning,
or they'd be fired
and face prosecution.
I don't care whether
he fires us or not.
If he does, it's gonna take years
to get controllers back in the field.
Yeah, it's not really hard to know
who to root for there.
On one side you've got
America's worst theater adult
treating a union of essential workers
like a terrorist organization,
and on the other, you've got a
certifiable daddy with a fresh bowl
and a mustache that you know
tickles all the right places.
And Reagan wasn't bluffing,
by the way,
11.000 air traffic controllers
ultimately did strike,
and he fired them all, banning
them from ever being rehired.
And that left some important
legacies, including a massive,
panicked hiring spree
of new controllers,
meaning that, two decades later,
there was also a massive wave
of retirements.
The FAA has never really managed
to catch up with hiring since then.
And part of the challenge is,
air traffic control is a difficult job.
And because of that,
there are strict requirements
even to be considered for it.
There are the obvious ones,
like you must speak English
fluently and clearly.
You also have to be younger
than 31 years old to apply,
demonstrate 20/20 vision or better
in each eye separately,
have no history of any form
of heart disease,
no high or low blood pressure,
and no history of psychosis,
neurosis, or any personality
or mental disorder
that demonstrates a potential
hazard. And good luck with that!
Nowadays, we all spend 20 hours a day
watching friends have fun without us,
the Pope is a Bob,
the oceans are plastic
and astronaut Katy Perry
is back on tour.
There is no such thing as a mentally
healthy person anymore,
just someone who doesn't have good
enough health insurance
to get a diagnosis!
Candidates also have to take an exam
called the Air Traffic Skills
Assessment, or ATSA,
which tests their working memory,
multitasking
and spatial awareness skills.
During one part, numbered
balls fly across the screen,
and you have to prevent collisions
by typing in one of their numbers,
while simultaneously
solving math problems. It is hard!
And if that feels a bit
like a video game to you,
the truth is, gaming skills are
increasingly seen as a positive here.
Gaming skills is a big part
of me being a controller.
You've got to pay attention
to the map.
You're constantly scanning
and watching what's going on.
You're memorizing maps and locations
like they do in certain games.
I used the football game Madden
to enhance my skills
to work the radar position
that I was working.
Yes! Finally, playing video games
counts as studying.
And good video games, too.
I'm not talking about the fake ones
that they let you play in school
where it looks fun but turns out
it's some bullshit about math.
No, thank you!
So, that's already a lot of steps
to get through,
in fact, less than 10% of applicants
are accepted into the training
program in the first place.
From there, candidates move on to
the only FAA academy in the country,
located in Oklahoma City,
where they train for months
on sophisticated computer
simulations, but also on this.
In the first room that we were,
we were in what we call it
the tabletops.
It's our low-fidelity simulation.
The students will be in that room
roughly about three weeks into
their training as a tower controller.
It's an opportunity for the students
to learn priorities,
learn some of the basics
that's needed.
Excellent. I love him clarifying that
this simulation is "low fidelity".
No shit, Brian!
It's a bunch of middle-aged men
playing with toy planes.
I know that is
a serious training facility
teaching an incredibly difficult skill,
but I also have to know:
do they make
the little plane noises?
'Cause again,
they're professionals at work,
but I would argue you should
not trust anyone
who can hold a toy plane
eight hours a day
That academy can only accommodate
around 1.800 trainees each year,
sharply limiting the hiring rate
of new controllers.
And the failure rate is intense,
just over 30%.
But if you make it through,
you get sent to an actual facility
for two to three more years
of training,
and that stage wipes out about one
in five of the remaining candidates.
And once you add up all the different
ways people don't make the cut,
you realize that out of 1.000
applicants, you might only end up
with around 50 certified air traffic
controllers at the end of a grueling,
years-long process.
That is a 5% success rate.
It's like "Squid Game"
if the prize of "Squid Game"
was to just keep doing
"Squid Game" as a job.
Now, once certified,
controllers are typically well-paid
and guaranteed a pension
after working at least 20 years.
But reaching
that milestone can be hard,
particularly as,
as you've already seen,
understaffing has forced many
into working mandatory overtime
and consistent six-day weeks.
And their options to deal with
the stress of that can be limited.
For instance, if you want to take
an approved antidepressant,
you have to step away
from being a controller,
potentially take unpaid leave,
and then be on a stable dose of it
for six months with no symptoms
or side effects,
before being allowed back to work.
And if you go see a doctor
who finds you're not physically
or emotionally qualified,
that can result in
"separation from the service",
losing your job
and jeopardizing your pension.
Consequently, air traffic controllers
can avoid seeking help.
One sign of just
how stressful this job is
is that there's a mandatory
retirement age of 56,
in part because it was determined
the mid-50s were the ages in which
burnout was likely to occur.
But the majority of controllers retire
before they even reach that age.
Which does make sense.
You've already seen
this is an incredibly difficult job.
It's certainly
way harder than this job,
which is still managing to age me
like a banana under a heat lamp.
So, it shouldn't be surprising
that controller shortages
have continued to get worse
even as more attention
has been paid to the problem.
Last year, despite years
of ramped-up hiring efforts,
they managed to net just
36 new controllers system-wide,
as those efforts were effectively
negated by attrition,
mandatory retirement
and other losses.
And look, if it were just short
staffing, that would be bad enough.
But controllers can also be forced
to deal with antiquated facilities
and systems.
Remember that movie about how they
kept track of planes on paper strips?
Guess how most towers
still do it today?
For all the radar
and computers they have,
the most essential tool for managing
individual aircraft is this:
a plastic strip.
There's times where you could
have 50 of those strips
and that's a way for us
to keep them organized,
and it's a memory aid for us,
so we use those all the time.
Yeah, they're using the same
technology they had in the '50s.
And this isn't some charmingly
nostalgic field,
like blacksmithing
or magazine journalism.
This is fucking aviation.
And look, old-fashioned technology
can be fine, so long as it works.
But the FAA itself has found
a lot of its systems
are reaching a breaking point.
In 2023, it determined that,
out of its 138 systems,
51 were unsustainable
and 54 were potentially unsustainable.
The head of the air traffic controllers'
union even said this month,
"We have computers, I kid you not,
that are based on Windows 95."
And here is the head
of the major airline trade group
explaining the situation to Congress.
It's not acceptable for controllers
and technicians
to have to work with paper
strips and floppy disks
to operate the national airspace
system in the United States.
I showed these to some people
in my office.
They couldn't tell me what they
were, because they were under 30.
Right! Our technology should
at least be up to date enough
that young people can recognize it.
And by the way,
if anyone under 30 is wondering
what that thing in his hand is,
let me explain.
In the old days,
computers had little mouths,
and they were always hungry.
So, occasionally, you'd feed them
tasty squares for breakfast,
and in return, they'd let
you play "Oregon Trail".
That's pretty much
how it worked back then.
So, clearly,
we've let a lot of stuff slide.
A recent report found there
was a 5.3 billion dollars backlog
of facility components
past their service lives,
and that for many of its systems,
the FAA is no longer able
to obtain spare parts, as product
lines have been discontinued,
and manufacturers no longer exist.
The FAA has even admitted
it's resorted to buying
replacement parts on eBay.
And that is clearly not where you
should be buying critical equipment.
The only things
you should be buying from eBay
are vintage Radio Shack swag
and discarded E-Meters from
the Church of Scientology.
And sure, you are
probably thinking,
"You can't get a real Hubbard
Professional Mark VI E-Meter,"
"those things are super rare,
and how do you even know it works?"
To which I'd say, actually,
it very much does work,
you're wrong about that,
and I am currently measuring
12 and a half thousand ohms.
Don't suppress me. You're being
suppressive right now.
Don't suppress me! I'm an amazing
human being with untapped potential!
And as for the facilities themselves,
they're not much better.
Many towers are now decades old
and controllers have reported issues
like elevator malfunctions,
meaning they've had to climb
hundreds of stairs to reach
the top of the towers,
and bees and biting flies harassing
controllers who were directing traffic.
A government report this year
even included this picture
of a radar system at one facility
being cooled by a rotary fan.
Which really puts the fan back
in the phrase,
And frustratingly,
Congress pledged to fix these
problems nearly two decades ago,
after controllers
raised similar issues,
like blinding condensation
at a tower in Puerto Rico,
black mold in Detroit,
and a tower in St. Louis
dealing with the challenge of bats.
To which I say, nope! Not at all!
The only tower full of bats
I ever want to hear about
is Perky, Florida's actual bat tower
that was built in 1929
in an effort to quell the out of
control mosquito population there.
The idea being
that a tower full of bats
would probably eat some
of the mosquitos.
It didn't work, by the way,
and I'll leave it at that.
Except I actually won't,
because you should know
that the major problem was,
there weren't any bats in Perky,
so to attract some,
they decided to fill the tower
with "bat bait" that was just
bat guano
plus the ground-up
sex organs of female bats
and, according to the building's
construction supervisor,
it smelled like
"nothing else on Earth".
But now, sadly,
we really do have to move on.
Except we can't, can we?
Because you also need to know
that it's unclear exactly
what happened next.
Some say the bats
who came immediately left,
while others say
no bats came at all.
Either way, Perky, Florida had a tower
full of bat shit and pussy mush,
until they stopped filling it with that
because the guy in charge of making it,
and this is true, died, and they didn't
know how to do it themselves.
Which feels weird, because the recipe
seems pretty simple to me!
The point is, not only should
we be talking about that more,
it is the only thing
anyone should talk about ever.
But, back in 2007,
George W. Bush unveiled something
called the Next Generation Air
Transportation System, or NextGen.
It was supposed to modernize
air traffic control by 2025,
which is, and this is true, now.
So, obviously, that didn't happen.
In fact, a report two years ago found
the FAA's budget for new technology
had actually shrunk since
NextGen was initially announced.
And a lot of this is because
the FAA is part of discretionary,
not mandatory,
government spending.
Meaning it's vulnerable to being
caught up in federal budget fights.
So, for example, that academy
in Oklahoma City was closed
for most of 2013 as a result
of sequestration,
and closed again in late 2018
during the government shutdown
when Trump tried holding
the budget hostage
to secure funding
for his border wall.
And it is really hard
to plan for any long-term overhaul
when the money you need keeps
getting pulled out from under you.
And when you take
all of this together,
aging technology, and crumbling
facilities full of people,
who are understandably burned
out, it is just asking for trouble.
Here is a supervisor
who was among those
who recently took leave
from overseeing Newark's airspace,
trying to explain that in response
to an incredibly obvious question.
Why is that a problem
for air traffic controllers
to not have properly functioning
radar, radios and backups?
Why is it a problem to not
have equipment that works?
I'm not really sure how to answer
that as that should be pretty obvious.
If I cut grass for a living and
my lawnmower doesn't work,
that's a problem.
And now I have to use scissors.
It's neither here nor there.
But yes, equipment not working properly
would be a constraint that would
cause issues for you, yes.
Okay, set aside that that man
looks like he's about to pull a quarter
out of your ear on the Vegas Strip,
or like Santa moved to Miami and
became a nightclub promoter,
that is a kind answer to an absurdly
obvious question.
And you know
he is a good air traffic controller,
because he somehow
landed his answer there
safely without hurting
that reporter's feelings.
So, what do we do? Well, there've
been a lot of ideas floated.
Trump's previously suggested
privatizing air traffic control,
though a congressional research
report found no evidence
privatization would be superior
to the system we already have.
More recently, his transportation
secretary, Sean Duffy,
has been vocal about the need to
increase air traffic control staffing.
Now, on the plus side,
he has, among other things,
offered a pay bump to trainees,
and continued plans started under Biden
to expand training beyond
that one Oklahoma City facility,
which is a good idea.
On the downside, he's cosigned
Trump's talk
about how problems at the FAA were
caused by diversity initiatives,
tweeting, "We need the best and
the brightest, not buzzword, DEI hires."
Which is both racist
and utterly divorced
from any of the issues at the agency.
And while Duffy recently unveiled
a new plan for a brand-new
air traffic control system,
standing at a podium reading
"Brand New Air Traffic Control System",
and proposed to upgrade our
infrastructure in just three years,
the devil is in the details here,
and he hasn't released
any specific spending plan,
or specific milestones
to achieve these upgrades.
Look, here is the good news:
people across the political spectrum
agree that we have a problem here.
The bad news is, there aren't
going to be quick fixes.
This is gonna require
long-term investment.
Which is why
it would probably be helpful
if Congress would make the FAA's
facilities and equipment
mandatory spending,
instead of discretionary.
That way, officials could plan
for investments and avoid
getting held hostage for the next
time Congress fights over budgets.
And in the meantime,
we need to do everything we can
to ramp up hiring
of air traffic controllers.
Because it is critically important work
and it needs to be properly valued.
And if we can do that,
then hopefully, one day,
we can get to the point
where a truly honest recruitment
video does not look like this.
Millions take
to the skies every day.
Behind their safe flights
is a hidden world that few ever see.
Orchestrating a symphony of aircraft
with expertise and precision,
air traffic controllers
are the guardians of the air.
I love this job.
My entire shift is an adventure
from start to finish.
You never know
what's coming your way,
whether it be emergency
landing or radio failure
or the elevator in your 40-year-old
tower is out of service
and you have to climb
15 flights of stairs,
which is chock-full of bees for
some reason. Just a ton of bees.
You have to stay three steps ahead.
And then have nine back-up plans
to cover those three steps.
And then have nine more plans
to cover the guy next to you
who retired
and they never replaced.
They say they are,
they're not going to.
Every day, they say, "We're getting
someone, we're going to"
and they're not going to.
Despite a lack of investment, decaying
infrastructure and Ronald Reagan,
air travel is still the safest way
to move around.
My father
was an air traffic controller,
and I feel a real connection
with him here at this job,
especially because this is the exact
same computer he used.
Yeah, he had to retire because
the doctor said
he had more ulcer than stomach.
But what are you gonna do?
I'm new here.
My supervisor gave me this square.
I still don't know what it's for.
I've been carrying it around
for weeks.
You wouldn't happen to know?
No? Nobody?
At the FAA, we're looking for young,
enthusiastic people
who know how to solve problems.
It's a challenging job for sure,
Sorry, the power goes out
whenever anyone flushes the toilet.
There you go.
So, as I was saying, you know,
what's important is that
Dave, one flush!
We talked about this!
I'm sorry! Look, would you
want to come here
and air traffic control me
while I'm on the toilet?
You want to guide me through it?
- No, I don't.
- That's what I thought!
Shit, the bat is back!
The bat is back!
There's a bat in here! Help!
Susan, the bat's back!
Grab the broom!
Help!
I gotta go help. Goddamn it.
Our brave controllers can handle
anything we throw at them.
Fucking turn around!
Which is good, because that means
we can just keep doing that forever.
It's a lot like a video game,
except we can never hit pause,
there are no extra lives,
and instead of NPCs,
it's you and your loved ones
on the 12:15 out of Dulles. Game on.
But do they ever give up?
Heck no.
You can be
an air traffic controller, too.
All you need to qualify
is 20/20 vision, perfect health
and be up to date on your rabies
shots. Because of all the bats.
I mean, look, I'll say it's 95% boring
and routine,
and 3% exciting and routine,
and 2% holy fuck.
No, seriously, holy fuck!
Flight 269, that is not your runway!
Get out of here!
So, next time you fly,
make sure to say thanks
to the air traffic controllers,
the guardians of the air.
What are you guys doing?
No one else is up here!
I'm juggling like 50 fucking flights!
Stop posing and come help me!
Come on, I didn't realize
everybody came down.
Derek!
That's our show, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night!
Fuck, I got bit by a bat. Fuck!
We're also out of toilet paper!
Should I use the bat?
Just get out of the bathroom, Dave!
- Susan? Did you get it?
- Yeah. Yeah, I got it.
- Got it? Good.
- I got it.
- 'Cause I'm doing an interview, so.
- Yeah, I got it.
Shit!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
We learned RFK's "MAHA" report
on children's health
cited studies that don't exist,
eight giant snake statues appeared
in Geneva to draw attention
to the dangers of,
you'll never guess, snakes,
and Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill"
continued its way through Congress,
despite strong opposition to some
of its cuts to programs like Medicaid.
Senator Joni Ernst was actually
confronted about those
at a town hall this week,
and her response was bold.
People will die!
Well, we all are going to die, so.
For heaven's sakes.
For heaven's sakes, folks.
Saying "we're all gonna die"
into a microphone
is already a pretty damning summation
of Republican politics.
But her casual tone there
also made it seem like
she might've just planted
a bomb in that room.
Trump spent much of his week
dishing out pardons to supporters,
continuing a trend that started
on day one of his presidency,
when he pardoned over 1.500
January 6th rioters.
On Monday, he pardoned
this former sheriff,
the day before he was supposed
to report to jail,
on a pretty open-shut case.
It took a rural Virginia jury
in the heart of Trump country
just two hours to convict
former Sheriff Scott Jenkins,
a longtime vocal Trump supporter,
of federal bribery and fraud charges
in December for accepting tens
of thousands of dollars in cash
in exchange for badges
for wealthy businessmen.
Prosecutors argued some exchanges
of cash were caught on video
from people who paid
to be deputized for the perks,
including to skip the TSA line, get
earlier access to the Covid vaccine,
avoid getting traffic tickets,
and in one case,
to help a felon
get his gun rights back.
Now, you should know, it turns out
those aren't real perks.
They're just things
these rich guys tried to get
from flashing their new badges.
But I do love the idea that they think
that it gets you whatever you want.
Yeah, you get to skip the TSA line,
unlimited free entry to Six Flags,
early access
to the Nintendo Switch 2,
a Hidden Immunity Idol
to be used at any Tribal Council,
and late check-out
and free continental breakfast.
And that is anywhere you want,
by the way.
You could get a free continental
breakfast at Old Navy if you wanted.
They have to give it to you.
You're a deputy sheriff!
Trump's pardon attorney seemed
to sum things up on Monday,
tweeting simply,
"No MAGA left behind,"
something borne out by Trump
also pardoning John Rowland,
a former Republican governor
convicted in an election fraud case,
and Michael Grimm, a former
Republican congressman
convicted of felony tax evasion.
Quick side note:
he once threatened a reporter
who'd asked him about separate
campaign finance allegations,
saying, "I'll break you in half.
Like a boy."
Which is such a weird way
to threaten someone.
Why was that
your top-of-mind example?
If the category on "Family Feud"
was "name something breakable"
and a contestant answered,
"A boy",
Steve Harvey would give his signature
confused stare for 20 straight minutes.
Trump's now pardoned
or granted clemency
to most of the Republican congressmen
convicted of felonies in 21st century.
But his pardons have also extended
to his financial supporters.
Because last month,
he pardoned Paul Walczak,
a nursing home executive who'd been
convicted after allegedly withholding
more than 10 million dollars from
the paychecks of the nurses,
doctors, and others who worked
at his facilities,
using the money to buy, among
other things, a 2 million yacht.
It's an almost cartoonishly evil crime,
making him an odd person
to single out for a pardon,
although this week, we learned
there was an extenuating circumstance.
The Trump administration pardoned
Paul Walczak after his mother,
Elizabeth Fago, attended a 1 million
per plate fundraising dinner
for the president's super PAC.
Three weeks after the dinner,
the president signed the pardon,
getting Walczak out
of an 18-month prison sentence
and a 4 million restitution payment.
It's true. She paid a million dollars
for a dinner, and suddenly,
her son got pardoned,
and out of paying 4 million back
to the people he stole from.
And the family seemed to implicitly
acknowledge the quid pro quo,
posting this image of mother and son,
MAGA'ed up, and captioned,
"'The righteous person
faces many troubles,"
"but the Lord comes to the rescue
each time. Psalm 34:19."
Fun fact: if you keep reading that
chapter, Psalm 34:20 says,
"By the way, when I say 'righteous'
I obviously don't mean people"
"who steal money from nursing home
staff and blow it on party boats,"
"just so we're fucking clear."
It's oddly specific,
but that's what you get when you read
the King James version.
And Trump still wasn't done.
Because on Wednesday,
he pardoned reality TV stars
Todd and Julie Chrisley,
who'd been sentenced
to 12 and seven years, respectively,
for some pretty flagrant misconduct.
For nearly a decade, the couple
portrayed themselves
as glamorous
self-made real estate tycoons
on the hit show
"Chrisley Knows Best".
Prosecutors said their life
was built on a lie,
calling them "career swindlers
who have made a living"
"from jumping from one fraud
scheme to another",
as they defrauded banks of more
than 30 million dollars,
stiffing vendors and dodging taxes,
using the money on luxury cars,
homes and designer clothes.
Yeah, these were some major crimes
committed by the stars
of "Chrisley Knows Best".
And if you've never seen it,
just know it centers around a couple
that answers the question:
what if Paula Deen had two
kids that fucked each other?
The Chrisleys were pardoned
after their daughter Savannah
made multiple appeals,
including appearing on
Lara Trump's Fox News show,
and even speaking at the RNC,
where she said this.
Justice, it's supposed to be blind.
But today,
we have a two-faced justice system.
Just look at what they're doing
to President Trump.
Donald J. Trump
has only one conviction that matters
and that is his conviction
to make America great again.
Okay, first, I think you're off
by around 33 counts there, Savannah.
But secondly, it is brave for her
to go out there and do that.
Not to suck up to Trump in
an utterly shameless manner,
but to do it while dressed like
the head of the PTA
who asked her hairstylist for
the "electrocuted Nancy Grace".
That is the genuinely brave part.
And look, presidential pardons
are conceptually a good thing.
They can correct
gross miscarriages of justice
and spare one turkey a year from
death in a cute little ceremony,
while a different turkey
is murdered off-camera,
wondering what it did wrong.
But in a country where there've been
many horrifying miscarriages of justice,
it is infuriating to see
an administration pardoning
flagrantly guilty people,
just because they sucked up
to the president or gave him money.
But I guess that's how
it's gonna be for the next few years,
if you're a Trump supporter, you
get to slip through the justice system
like you've got a FastPass
to Disneyland,
and for everyone else,
if I may paraphrase
Iowa's favorite junior senator
slash-angel of death,
what're you all complaining about,
you're all gonna die anyway.
And now, this.
And Now: Dagen McDowell
Will Not Curse on Television.
Let her rip, Dagen.
Let her rip, you better be careful.
I'll just try
to not curse on live television.
'Cause I'm trying not to curse.
I'm not gonna curse.
I would curse,
but it's 6:03 in the morning.
Clay, take it from here because
I only have curse words.
I'm just shaking my head
'cause I'm really trying not to curse.
I'm trying not to curse.
I was gonna curse.
I'm stifling, because I don't
wanna curse and get fired.
Dagen, have you ever gone
to Times Square during New Year's?
Curse word, curse word, curse
word, curse word, no.
happens at 2:46 AM.
I didn't have to give
a flying flip what I look like.
What? I did not curse.
I said "flying flip".
For more than a decade,
Facebook hasn't given a flying flip.
They really don't give a flying flip.
He doesn't give a flip.
Flying flip.
We don't give a flying flip.
Stop giving a flying flip.
Flippin' Foo Fighters concert.
I did go to an all-girls southern
school for a few years
and you don't want to hang out
with those bitches.
Moving on.
Our main story concerns air travel.
Some favorite methods include
planes, hot air balloons,
those old doohickeys that go
chugga-chugga and then fall apart,
and of course, befriending the birds.
The safety of air travel
has made headlines in recent years,
thanks to incidents like these.
10 days ago in San Diego,
a Citation business jet
nearly landed
on top of a Southwest 737.
In Austin last February,
a FedEx plane nearly landed
on a Southwest flight,
both cleared
for the same runway.
And this photo taken from a JetBlue
cockpit landing in Boston
as a business jet suddenly pulled onto
the same runway without permission.
Well, that is terrifying.
Planes should definitely
not be landing on top of each other
and I say that knowing
that there's a non-zero chance
Tom Cruise will hear and immediately
greenlight a new "Mission Impossible"
to do exactly that himself.
I am not saying
that he's trying to die on camera,
I'm just saying the only way Tom Cruise
passes away peacefully in his bed
is if the bed is being dropped
into an active volcano
to somehow save
the "live moviegoing experience".
Now, while those stories
are obviously alarming,
it is important to say, large,
fatal commercial airline crashes
are extremely rare,
and commercial flying is still
the safest way to travel by far.
And one major reason for that
is air traffic controllers,
who, as this recruitment video
points out,
are really the unsung
heroes of the skies.
Millions take to the skies every day,
and behind their safe flights
is a hidden world that few ever see.
Orchestrating a symphony of aircraft
with expertise and precision,
air traffic controllers
are the guardians of the air.
It's kind of an adventure from start
to finish, your entire shift.
You never know
what's coming your way
and that's what makes it exciting.
It's a fun challenge to me.
The harder the challenge for me,
makes it feel like
the greater the victory.
We think kind of three steps ahead
and then we have like nine backup
plans to those three steps ahead.
Yeah, it's a lot!
Air traffic controllers have
to be constantly vigilant.
It's not like a normal job
where you start a task,
then check Reddit for a few hours,
then go back to it,
but then it's lunch,
then you start the task again,
but then you need a coffee,
then you get sucked into
a conversation with fuckin' Derek,
so you vent to your pal Jeanine
about how much Derek sucks.
Then you go back to work,
then you see Jeanine laughing
with fuckin' Derek about something
and you think, "Wait, are Jeanine
and Derek friends? Oh, shit."
Then it's 6:00 PM
and whatever you had to do
really feels more
like a tomorrow thing anyway.
Unlike that, air traffic controllers
actually have to get shit done.
Together, they ensure the safety
of about two million passengers per day.
But as you've undoubtedly noticed,
there've been signs that our system
is under extreme strain,
like this story from last month
about massive delays at Newark.
Monday's bad weather complicated
an air traffic control staffing
nightmare that started last Monday.
After a number of system outages,
controllers' screens essentially
went dark for up to 90 seconds,
losing the ability to track
aircraft at a key facility
handling traffic
in and out of Newark.
It was a breaking point
for about a half dozen controllers
who requested trauma leave
due to the working conditions.
Yeah, it was so bad, some
controllers took trauma leave.
And I really hope
they spent that time recovering
in a place more comforting
than Newark,
very much the New Jersey
of places in New Jersey.
That's not all. In January, a passenger
jet and a military helicopter
collided near Reagan Airport,
killing 67 people.
That happened just days
after Trump's inauguration,
and he rose to meet the moment
with his characteristic empathy
and poetic turn of phrase.
I guess the helicopter was high
and we'll find out
exactly what happened.
But the odds, even if you had
nothing, if you had nobody,
the odds of that happening
are extremely small.
You go to a driving range in golf
and you're hitting balls,
hundreds of balls,
thousands of hours, I never see
a ball hit another ball.
Balls going up all over the place,
you never see 'em hit.
It was amazing that that could happen.
There were a lot of mistakes made,
and it should have never happened.
But regardless of that,
it's amazing that it happened.
You know, it's hard to know
what to focus on there,
the phrase "even if you had
nothing, if you had nobody",
which sounds like a Tim McGraw
song that'd play
during the credits of "Trolls 4:
For Whom the Bell Trolls",
or comparing a deadly aviation disaster
to a fluke golfing event.
Who among us hasn't been on a plane
during rough turbulence,
wondering if the worst is about
to happen, and thought,
"You know, this is just like
when the president's hitting"
"hundreds of beautiful golf balls
at one of his many high-class resorts."
"They almost never hit each other,
and if they did, it would be amazing."
And while the investigation
into that crash is ongoing,
the preliminary report suggested
that, among many other problems,
there was a shortage
of controllers that night,
with one person doing both helicopter
and local flight control, combined.
And just two months later, there was
another close call at that same airport,
after which it emerged
that a supervisor in the tower
had been accused of punching
another controller in the face,
leading the FAA to dispatch a team
of mental health professionals
to offer "confidential stress management
support" for controllers.
And all of this is bringing into sharp
focus just how stressful this job is,
and how understaffed
most facilities are.
While we'd ideally have over 14,000
certified professional controllers,
we currently have just
under 11,000,
and apparently, 99% of air traffic
control facilities in the U.S.
are operating below
recommended staffing levels.
Controllers have been sounding
the alarm about this for a while now.
At the end of 2023, it was reported
that "potentially dangerous close calls"
"had been happening
multiple times a week",
and some controllers argued
that the overtime
they were being forced to work
was a major safety issue.
We're tired of working six days a week.
We're tired of working 10-hour days.
NBC News has obtained
internal FAA documents,
first reported
by The New York Times,
detailing controllers' own anonymous
reporting of mistakes and exhaustion.
Among the entries, "Many employees
can be observed sleeping on the job",
"If I had not been fatigued, I may
have been able to recognize"
"the aircraft lined up for
the incorrect runway sooner"
and "I pray no one dies
due to controller fatigue."
Well, that's not great!
If I had to pick adjectives
to describe air traffic controllers
in charge of my flight,
"well-rested" would be
near the top of the list,
along with "highly-paid"
and possibly even
"erotically thrilled by the concept
of planes landing safely."
As long as we get there in one piece,
I don't really care what
the hand under the desk is doing.
When you combine all of that with the
fact that air traffic control equipment
is shockingly outdated
and poorly maintained,
it's frankly a miracle our system
works as well as it does.
But we probably shouldn't be
running it on miracles.
So, given that, tonight,
let's talk about air traffic control,
the people who do it,
the conditions they work in
and what can be done to help them.
And let's start with the fact that,
in the early days of aviation,
air traffic controllers
weren't really necessary.
Flights were rare enough that most
operated during daylight hours
under the practice
of "see and be seen".
But by the late 1950s,
air traffic control started to look
much more like what we have today.
Flight 104 is on its way to Washington.
But the flight actually began
30 minutes ago,
when the co-pilot
filed the flight plan.
Within 12 seconds after the flight
plan is filed in the computer,
flight strips are being printed
for the Boston control center
departure controller and his assistant.
The strip is placed
in the proposed departure bay
well in advance
of the departure time,
allowing the controller plenty
of time for pre-planning.
Yes, the strip is placed
in the proposed departure bay
well in advance of the departure time,
at which point the metal bird
will take to the skies carrying
a pilot, a co-pilot,
a team of stewardesses,
and 100 alcoholic businessmen
who will make their jobs
a living hell.
Back then, radar was
used around airports,
but it wasn't used nationwide
until a disaster in 1956,
when two planes collided
over the Grand Canyon.
After that, Congress approved a major
upgrade of the nation's airway system
and created the FAA to take
responsibility for air traffic control.
And that led to the complex system
that we have today,
where a plane
flying across the country
will be handed off
among a series of control facilities.
As a plane pushes back from the gate,
a ground controller
taxis you to the runway.
Then, tower control handles
the aircraft that are taking off
and on final approach, typically
from the surface to 2,500 feet
and a five-mile radius
of the airport.
Then terminal radar approach control,
or TRACON controllers,
take over until the aircraft
is at about 18,000 feet
and handed off
to an en route controller.
Exactly.
There is a whole series of handoffs
that you never really think about
during a flight,
because they work pretty seamlessly,
leaving you free
to focus on important
plane questions, like,
"If I get up to go pee
will I miss the snack cart?"
and "If that guy doesn't put his
shoes on can I legally kill him?"
The answers, of course being,
"Yes"
and "No, but no jury
will convict you."
The point is,
in buildings all over the country,
people are directing tens
of thousands of planes each day,
which is a real challenge,
and for many,
it's an exciting and fulfilling job.
Here is one former controller
summing it up pretty well.
It is extremely difficult
to explain to people
how fast you have
to make decisions,
except to emergency
medical professionals.
It's 95% boring and routine.
It's 3% exciting and routine.
It's 1% exciting and a little like,
okay, this is not routine.
And it's 1% holy fuck!
Okay, first, I absolutely love her.
And second, we all have "holy fuck"
moments sometimes, don't we?
For instance, a lot of people in this
room now are probably thinking,
"Holy fuck, we could have
gone to see Hadestown,"
"but instead we're listening
to stats about air safety."
But when an air traffic controller
says it, the stakes are clearly higher.
And one major challenge
for controllers today
is that there simply aren't
enough of them.
We've actually been short-handed
for years now
and, as with so many things
on this show,
at least some of the blame
lies with Ronald Reagan.
In the early 1980s,
as air travel was booming,
the air traffic controllers' union was
pushing for improved staffing levels,
benefits and technology.
They backed Reagan as a candidate,
he'd promised to deliver on that,
but once he took office,
he failed to follow through,
and they went on strike. And in
response, Reagan hit back hard.
You can't sit and negotiate with
a union that's in violation of the law.
And their oath.
With those words, President Reagan
told the air traffic controllers
to be back in the towers
Wednesday morning,
or they'd be fired
and face prosecution.
I don't care whether
he fires us or not.
If he does, it's gonna take years
to get controllers back in the field.
Yeah, it's not really hard to know
who to root for there.
On one side you've got
America's worst theater adult
treating a union of essential workers
like a terrorist organization,
and on the other, you've got a
certifiable daddy with a fresh bowl
and a mustache that you know
tickles all the right places.
And Reagan wasn't bluffing,
by the way,
11.000 air traffic controllers
ultimately did strike,
and he fired them all, banning
them from ever being rehired.
And that left some important
legacies, including a massive,
panicked hiring spree
of new controllers,
meaning that, two decades later,
there was also a massive wave
of retirements.
The FAA has never really managed
to catch up with hiring since then.
And part of the challenge is,
air traffic control is a difficult job.
And because of that,
there are strict requirements
even to be considered for it.
There are the obvious ones,
like you must speak English
fluently and clearly.
You also have to be younger
than 31 years old to apply,
demonstrate 20/20 vision or better
in each eye separately,
have no history of any form
of heart disease,
no high or low blood pressure,
and no history of psychosis,
neurosis, or any personality
or mental disorder
that demonstrates a potential
hazard. And good luck with that!
Nowadays, we all spend 20 hours a day
watching friends have fun without us,
the Pope is a Bob,
the oceans are plastic
and astronaut Katy Perry
is back on tour.
There is no such thing as a mentally
healthy person anymore,
just someone who doesn't have good
enough health insurance
to get a diagnosis!
Candidates also have to take an exam
called the Air Traffic Skills
Assessment, or ATSA,
which tests their working memory,
multitasking
and spatial awareness skills.
During one part, numbered
balls fly across the screen,
and you have to prevent collisions
by typing in one of their numbers,
while simultaneously
solving math problems. It is hard!
And if that feels a bit
like a video game to you,
the truth is, gaming skills are
increasingly seen as a positive here.
Gaming skills is a big part
of me being a controller.
You've got to pay attention
to the map.
You're constantly scanning
and watching what's going on.
You're memorizing maps and locations
like they do in certain games.
I used the football game Madden
to enhance my skills
to work the radar position
that I was working.
Yes! Finally, playing video games
counts as studying.
And good video games, too.
I'm not talking about the fake ones
that they let you play in school
where it looks fun but turns out
it's some bullshit about math.
No, thank you!
So, that's already a lot of steps
to get through,
in fact, less than 10% of applicants
are accepted into the training
program in the first place.
From there, candidates move on to
the only FAA academy in the country,
located in Oklahoma City,
where they train for months
on sophisticated computer
simulations, but also on this.
In the first room that we were,
we were in what we call it
the tabletops.
It's our low-fidelity simulation.
The students will be in that room
roughly about three weeks into
their training as a tower controller.
It's an opportunity for the students
to learn priorities,
learn some of the basics
that's needed.
Excellent. I love him clarifying that
this simulation is "low fidelity".
No shit, Brian!
It's a bunch of middle-aged men
playing with toy planes.
I know that is
a serious training facility
teaching an incredibly difficult skill,
but I also have to know:
do they make
the little plane noises?
'Cause again,
they're professionals at work,
but I would argue you should
not trust anyone
who can hold a toy plane
eight hours a day
That academy can only accommodate
around 1.800 trainees each year,
sharply limiting the hiring rate
of new controllers.
And the failure rate is intense,
just over 30%.
But if you make it through,
you get sent to an actual facility
for two to three more years
of training,
and that stage wipes out about one
in five of the remaining candidates.
And once you add up all the different
ways people don't make the cut,
you realize that out of 1.000
applicants, you might only end up
with around 50 certified air traffic
controllers at the end of a grueling,
years-long process.
That is a 5% success rate.
It's like "Squid Game"
if the prize of "Squid Game"
was to just keep doing
"Squid Game" as a job.
Now, once certified,
controllers are typically well-paid
and guaranteed a pension
after working at least 20 years.
But reaching
that milestone can be hard,
particularly as,
as you've already seen,
understaffing has forced many
into working mandatory overtime
and consistent six-day weeks.
And their options to deal with
the stress of that can be limited.
For instance, if you want to take
an approved antidepressant,
you have to step away
from being a controller,
potentially take unpaid leave,
and then be on a stable dose of it
for six months with no symptoms
or side effects,
before being allowed back to work.
And if you go see a doctor
who finds you're not physically
or emotionally qualified,
that can result in
"separation from the service",
losing your job
and jeopardizing your pension.
Consequently, air traffic controllers
can avoid seeking help.
One sign of just
how stressful this job is
is that there's a mandatory
retirement age of 56,
in part because it was determined
the mid-50s were the ages in which
burnout was likely to occur.
But the majority of controllers retire
before they even reach that age.
Which does make sense.
You've already seen
this is an incredibly difficult job.
It's certainly
way harder than this job,
which is still managing to age me
like a banana under a heat lamp.
So, it shouldn't be surprising
that controller shortages
have continued to get worse
even as more attention
has been paid to the problem.
Last year, despite years
of ramped-up hiring efforts,
they managed to net just
36 new controllers system-wide,
as those efforts were effectively
negated by attrition,
mandatory retirement
and other losses.
And look, if it were just short
staffing, that would be bad enough.
But controllers can also be forced
to deal with antiquated facilities
and systems.
Remember that movie about how they
kept track of planes on paper strips?
Guess how most towers
still do it today?
For all the radar
and computers they have,
the most essential tool for managing
individual aircraft is this:
a plastic strip.
There's times where you could
have 50 of those strips
and that's a way for us
to keep them organized,
and it's a memory aid for us,
so we use those all the time.
Yeah, they're using the same
technology they had in the '50s.
And this isn't some charmingly
nostalgic field,
like blacksmithing
or magazine journalism.
This is fucking aviation.
And look, old-fashioned technology
can be fine, so long as it works.
But the FAA itself has found
a lot of its systems
are reaching a breaking point.
In 2023, it determined that,
out of its 138 systems,
51 were unsustainable
and 54 were potentially unsustainable.
The head of the air traffic controllers'
union even said this month,
"We have computers, I kid you not,
that are based on Windows 95."
And here is the head
of the major airline trade group
explaining the situation to Congress.
It's not acceptable for controllers
and technicians
to have to work with paper
strips and floppy disks
to operate the national airspace
system in the United States.
I showed these to some people
in my office.
They couldn't tell me what they
were, because they were under 30.
Right! Our technology should
at least be up to date enough
that young people can recognize it.
And by the way,
if anyone under 30 is wondering
what that thing in his hand is,
let me explain.
In the old days,
computers had little mouths,
and they were always hungry.
So, occasionally, you'd feed them
tasty squares for breakfast,
and in return, they'd let
you play "Oregon Trail".
That's pretty much
how it worked back then.
So, clearly,
we've let a lot of stuff slide.
A recent report found there
was a 5.3 billion dollars backlog
of facility components
past their service lives,
and that for many of its systems,
the FAA is no longer able
to obtain spare parts, as product
lines have been discontinued,
and manufacturers no longer exist.
The FAA has even admitted
it's resorted to buying
replacement parts on eBay.
And that is clearly not where you
should be buying critical equipment.
The only things
you should be buying from eBay
are vintage Radio Shack swag
and discarded E-Meters from
the Church of Scientology.
And sure, you are
probably thinking,
"You can't get a real Hubbard
Professional Mark VI E-Meter,"
"those things are super rare,
and how do you even know it works?"
To which I'd say, actually,
it very much does work,
you're wrong about that,
and I am currently measuring
12 and a half thousand ohms.
Don't suppress me. You're being
suppressive right now.
Don't suppress me! I'm an amazing
human being with untapped potential!
And as for the facilities themselves,
they're not much better.
Many towers are now decades old
and controllers have reported issues
like elevator malfunctions,
meaning they've had to climb
hundreds of stairs to reach
the top of the towers,
and bees and biting flies harassing
controllers who were directing traffic.
A government report this year
even included this picture
of a radar system at one facility
being cooled by a rotary fan.
Which really puts the fan back
in the phrase,
And frustratingly,
Congress pledged to fix these
problems nearly two decades ago,
after controllers
raised similar issues,
like blinding condensation
at a tower in Puerto Rico,
black mold in Detroit,
and a tower in St. Louis
dealing with the challenge of bats.
To which I say, nope! Not at all!
The only tower full of bats
I ever want to hear about
is Perky, Florida's actual bat tower
that was built in 1929
in an effort to quell the out of
control mosquito population there.
The idea being
that a tower full of bats
would probably eat some
of the mosquitos.
It didn't work, by the way,
and I'll leave it at that.
Except I actually won't,
because you should know
that the major problem was,
there weren't any bats in Perky,
so to attract some,
they decided to fill the tower
with "bat bait" that was just
bat guano
plus the ground-up
sex organs of female bats
and, according to the building's
construction supervisor,
it smelled like
"nothing else on Earth".
But now, sadly,
we really do have to move on.
Except we can't, can we?
Because you also need to know
that it's unclear exactly
what happened next.
Some say the bats
who came immediately left,
while others say
no bats came at all.
Either way, Perky, Florida had a tower
full of bat shit and pussy mush,
until they stopped filling it with that
because the guy in charge of making it,
and this is true, died, and they didn't
know how to do it themselves.
Which feels weird, because the recipe
seems pretty simple to me!
The point is, not only should
we be talking about that more,
it is the only thing
anyone should talk about ever.
But, back in 2007,
George W. Bush unveiled something
called the Next Generation Air
Transportation System, or NextGen.
It was supposed to modernize
air traffic control by 2025,
which is, and this is true, now.
So, obviously, that didn't happen.
In fact, a report two years ago found
the FAA's budget for new technology
had actually shrunk since
NextGen was initially announced.
And a lot of this is because
the FAA is part of discretionary,
not mandatory,
government spending.
Meaning it's vulnerable to being
caught up in federal budget fights.
So, for example, that academy
in Oklahoma City was closed
for most of 2013 as a result
of sequestration,
and closed again in late 2018
during the government shutdown
when Trump tried holding
the budget hostage
to secure funding
for his border wall.
And it is really hard
to plan for any long-term overhaul
when the money you need keeps
getting pulled out from under you.
And when you take
all of this together,
aging technology, and crumbling
facilities full of people,
who are understandably burned
out, it is just asking for trouble.
Here is a supervisor
who was among those
who recently took leave
from overseeing Newark's airspace,
trying to explain that in response
to an incredibly obvious question.
Why is that a problem
for air traffic controllers
to not have properly functioning
radar, radios and backups?
Why is it a problem to not
have equipment that works?
I'm not really sure how to answer
that as that should be pretty obvious.
If I cut grass for a living and
my lawnmower doesn't work,
that's a problem.
And now I have to use scissors.
It's neither here nor there.
But yes, equipment not working properly
would be a constraint that would
cause issues for you, yes.
Okay, set aside that that man
looks like he's about to pull a quarter
out of your ear on the Vegas Strip,
or like Santa moved to Miami and
became a nightclub promoter,
that is a kind answer to an absurdly
obvious question.
And you know
he is a good air traffic controller,
because he somehow
landed his answer there
safely without hurting
that reporter's feelings.
So, what do we do? Well, there've
been a lot of ideas floated.
Trump's previously suggested
privatizing air traffic control,
though a congressional research
report found no evidence
privatization would be superior
to the system we already have.
More recently, his transportation
secretary, Sean Duffy,
has been vocal about the need to
increase air traffic control staffing.
Now, on the plus side,
he has, among other things,
offered a pay bump to trainees,
and continued plans started under Biden
to expand training beyond
that one Oklahoma City facility,
which is a good idea.
On the downside, he's cosigned
Trump's talk
about how problems at the FAA were
caused by diversity initiatives,
tweeting, "We need the best and
the brightest, not buzzword, DEI hires."
Which is both racist
and utterly divorced
from any of the issues at the agency.
And while Duffy recently unveiled
a new plan for a brand-new
air traffic control system,
standing at a podium reading
"Brand New Air Traffic Control System",
and proposed to upgrade our
infrastructure in just three years,
the devil is in the details here,
and he hasn't released
any specific spending plan,
or specific milestones
to achieve these upgrades.
Look, here is the good news:
people across the political spectrum
agree that we have a problem here.
The bad news is, there aren't
going to be quick fixes.
This is gonna require
long-term investment.
Which is why
it would probably be helpful
if Congress would make the FAA's
facilities and equipment
mandatory spending,
instead of discretionary.
That way, officials could plan
for investments and avoid
getting held hostage for the next
time Congress fights over budgets.
And in the meantime,
we need to do everything we can
to ramp up hiring
of air traffic controllers.
Because it is critically important work
and it needs to be properly valued.
And if we can do that,
then hopefully, one day,
we can get to the point
where a truly honest recruitment
video does not look like this.
Millions take
to the skies every day.
Behind their safe flights
is a hidden world that few ever see.
Orchestrating a symphony of aircraft
with expertise and precision,
air traffic controllers
are the guardians of the air.
I love this job.
My entire shift is an adventure
from start to finish.
You never know
what's coming your way,
whether it be emergency
landing or radio failure
or the elevator in your 40-year-old
tower is out of service
and you have to climb
15 flights of stairs,
which is chock-full of bees for
some reason. Just a ton of bees.
You have to stay three steps ahead.
And then have nine back-up plans
to cover those three steps.
And then have nine more plans
to cover the guy next to you
who retired
and they never replaced.
They say they are,
they're not going to.
Every day, they say, "We're getting
someone, we're going to"
and they're not going to.
Despite a lack of investment, decaying
infrastructure and Ronald Reagan,
air travel is still the safest way
to move around.
My father
was an air traffic controller,
and I feel a real connection
with him here at this job,
especially because this is the exact
same computer he used.
Yeah, he had to retire because
the doctor said
he had more ulcer than stomach.
But what are you gonna do?
I'm new here.
My supervisor gave me this square.
I still don't know what it's for.
I've been carrying it around
for weeks.
You wouldn't happen to know?
No? Nobody?
At the FAA, we're looking for young,
enthusiastic people
who know how to solve problems.
It's a challenging job for sure,
Sorry, the power goes out
whenever anyone flushes the toilet.
There you go.
So, as I was saying, you know,
what's important is that
Dave, one flush!
We talked about this!
I'm sorry! Look, would you
want to come here
and air traffic control me
while I'm on the toilet?
You want to guide me through it?
- No, I don't.
- That's what I thought!
Shit, the bat is back!
The bat is back!
There's a bat in here! Help!
Susan, the bat's back!
Grab the broom!
Help!
I gotta go help. Goddamn it.
Our brave controllers can handle
anything we throw at them.
Fucking turn around!
Which is good, because that means
we can just keep doing that forever.
It's a lot like a video game,
except we can never hit pause,
there are no extra lives,
and instead of NPCs,
it's you and your loved ones
on the 12:15 out of Dulles. Game on.
But do they ever give up?
Heck no.
You can be
an air traffic controller, too.
All you need to qualify
is 20/20 vision, perfect health
and be up to date on your rabies
shots. Because of all the bats.
I mean, look, I'll say it's 95% boring
and routine,
and 3% exciting and routine,
and 2% holy fuck.
No, seriously, holy fuck!
Flight 269, that is not your runway!
Get out of here!
So, next time you fly,
make sure to say thanks
to the air traffic controllers,
the guardians of the air.
What are you guys doing?
No one else is up here!
I'm juggling like 50 fucking flights!
Stop posing and come help me!
Come on, I didn't realize
everybody came down.
Derek!
That's our show, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night!
Fuck, I got bit by a bat. Fuck!
We're also out of toilet paper!
Should I use the bat?
Just get out of the bathroom, Dave!
- Susan? Did you get it?
- Yeah. Yeah, I got it.
- Got it? Good.
- I got it.
- 'Cause I'm doing an interview, so.
- Yeah, I got it.
Shit!