Arriving this morning and flights were delayed at newark, philadelphia, washington, others. it is exactly the kind of thing the ceo of southwest air warned could happen. the thought that you would refer to people and their jobs as nonessential is absurd. everybody is essential or they shouldn t have a job. as an example, the faa is not hiring replacement air traffic controllers or training them. all those are considered nonessential functions and that is shutdown. so that means that where the faa is already stressed in terms of staffing all of the centers around the country, now they ll be even more stressed. so there is a risk that air traffic will have to be slowed down. there you go. boy, was he prescient about that. i m joined now live by the president of the air traffic controllers association, paul rinaldi. you and i watched what the fbi direct her to say. i m guessing you can understand
Officers who refused to work hit a record high last weekend, and now air traffic controllers, pilots and flight attendants are warning travelers they cannot guarantee their safety saying we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. and when that system breaks, people die. the washington post reports that unpaid air traffic controllers are waiting tables and driving for uber in the time left over from their ten-hour shifts, tracking the position and speed of aircraft to prevent collisions. joining our discussion now is trish gilbert, executive vice president of the national air traffic controllers association. she was on air traffic control for 21 years. and sara nelson, the president of the association of flight attendants. she has been a flight attendant for 23 years. trish gilbert, i flew a couple of weekends ago p and immediately tweeted my thanks to
It is unprecedented. are we even closer today to that breaking point than we were yesterday? does this start to have a deum lative effect? it s a very complex air space system, especially the northeast corridor. and when you look at where we re into the sick leaves aren t in laguardia, kennedy, newark, or philadelphia. they re actually in our big end route centers, the one in washington and jacksonville is what we re seeing. we re talking just a handful of sick leaves is what we re talking about in each area. but we can t open up all the positions the so what we do is combine the air space, combine the positions and you can t run the same amount of traffic safely. and we will never compromise safety of the flying public. paul rinaldi, president of the air traffic controllers association. we hope what we are about to hear from the president is your staff is going to start to get paid, all the air traffic controllers and all federal workers are going to be paid. thank you for that. w
Warning travelers they cannot guarantee their safety saying we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. and when that system breaks, people die. the washington post reports that unpaid air traffic controllers are waiting tables and driving for uber in the time left over from their ten-hour shifts, tracking the position and speed of aircraft to prevent collisions. joining our discussion now is trish gilbert, executive vice president of the national air traffic controllers association. she was on air traffic control for 21 years. and sara nelson, the president of the association of flight attendants. she has been a flight attendant for 23 years. trish gilbert, i flew a couple of weekends ago p and immediately tweeted my thanks to the air traffic controllers when we miraculously took off on time
Including john kelly all tell ing the president and congress the nation cannot be kept safe if the shutdown continues. the warning gets worse. the head of the air traffic controllers association says he can t even calculate the level of risk for travelers right now. and then instead of making a deal today, the president issued a dare to the speaker of the house saying cancel the state of the union address. she did. now what? we re going to talk to the cham chairman of the house democratic caucus. and michael cohen, the former personal lawyer backed out of testifying before congress citing threats from president trump. was that the president s? intention all along? let s get after it. tomorrow is supposed to be a big day. it s the first action in the senate since the president shut down the government over 33 days ago because of the wall. there are going to be voting on two competing proposals. neither is expected to pass.