across the industry. exactly. all that money went to employees. that didn t go to the companies. it went to our employees to make sure our employees maintain their jobs, and we were in position to respond when it was safe to start traveling again. i think the economic return of keeping all those employees jobs, the taxes they re paying, the employment benefit, the fact that our air transportation system in our country now is fully back compared to any other country in the world, the u.s. air transportation system has been protected, has been maintained, and it s vital. it s an essential service. i think it s been a great investment. over time i think history will show it was one of the smartest thing the government did in the c.a.r.e.s. act. ed bastian, ceo of delta, thank you for being with us. good to be with you. coming up more on the
boeing board. there is a lot of cross-pollination here between boeing and this administration. many people were saying, that s why he wouldn t do anything. obviously, that s not the case, or at least not the case now, that he has taken this action. but to your basic question, did he have a choice? yeah, he did have a choice, but that choice was getting narrower and narrower and now it seems like it would have been a bit of a quixotic thing to say, oh, we re going to keep standing up against this when the whole world is saying, let s get some answers first. especially, and don t forget, we re only talking about a few dozen planes of this variety in the united states. if you park them all, it has very, very little impact on the tens of thousands that fly every day. it s not like the air transportation system cannot withstand parking these planes. again, all the more reason that critics said, why not just park them and sort it out. why take any sort of risk?
mean a lot because there s a lot floating around on the internet. the timing is trouble because it comes on the heels of not just the paris attack but if you step back and think that in the last three weeks, isis has killed over 500 people and they have attacked the air transportation system and were successful. they used ieds in lebanon. they were successful. and now they hit the soft targets, which are very, very vulnerable in paris and if you put all three of those together, that is pretty impressive, that they were able to hit all three of those kinds of ways of carrying on an attack. so it s troubling and it s concerning to all of us and as time goes by, we continue to ratchet the united states. go ahead. i want to clarify one thing. you told us that four of these terrorists who were involved in the paris attacks were known to the u.s. but we have been
just take post world war ii, in 1946 there were 1,500 fatalities, approximately, of passengers. today we are at zero. if you look at the past five years in the u.s. in the u.s. let s talk about passenger operations by u.s. air transportation systems in the united states. in the past five years, the u.s. air transportation system has transported 3.7 billion people. that is the equivalent of having transported the population of the united states more than ten times without putting so much as a scratch on anyone. you re right. and this is an individual tragedy and it is outside the norm for air travel everywhere. but the question is, should more be done on these planes, to these planes, inside these planes, so that something like this doesn t happen if a plane disappears? i already think there are some lessons we can begin to
ball as time goes on. can you give me a percentage, at least today, for example? i said there are about 1,200 flights delayed. do we know what percentage you believe were canceled or delayed as a result of the furlough? i can t answer that right now. okay. we know reuters is reporting that the senate commerce committee leaders are pressing the obama administration for more information on how it plans to furlough air traffic controllers and close contract towers, and how it would affect public safety. there is a quote from senate commerce committee chairman jay rockefeller. he said we are faced with substantial possible disruptions to the air transportation system. what is your may know concern? obviously jobs. as far as public safety, are there questions that are lingering right now? we re comfortable on safety because safety won t be compromised. certainly by our member airlines. what we re concerned about is the lack of transparency in the