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And for 35 days we have not identified, we haven t trained and we haven t worked on mitigating any safe conflicts. dana: i heard in oklahoma, there were air traffic control trainees, new hires, they were there. but then they got furloughed. they walked away and they might not come back. paul: i know dana: they might choose to go work somewhere else in the economy. paul: that is a big concern because they have met their hiring goal. we are at a 30-year low of certified controllers in the system. 10,500, of which 19,000 almost 20% of them, 1900, 20% of them can retire. and so we need to keep that pipeline coming through the academy. now, some of them close to ending that class and now they have to start all over again. dana: right. paul: it will take a lot to. dana: hopefully this three week deal with turn into a ....
Increased stress but they have o come to work clearheaded and ready for the task at hand which is a highly stressful occupation to begin with. dana: she had this to say yesterday about the situation. we are left i am getting notes from people that are saying they are making mistakes that they have made ten, 15, 20 years of service that they have been in air traffic controller. they are making them because they are stressed out and because i don t know when this will end. they are distracted. dana: in a bit of irony, the shutdown became the national emergency with a concern about safety. paul: safety was denigrated every day. we have built ultimate safety culture where we report everything that happens in the system. it gets reviewed by experts, quality assurance, training experts. they identify way to mitigate the risk and then retrain that risk for the controllers. since the system is safe. ten years we have been building ....
Verge of being over. perhaps we are going to see much shorter lines in the days approaching the super bowl, dana. dana: john, thank you in atlanta. let s bring in paul reynold d, air traffic controllers association, good to have you here. you are in the green room listening to the president speech. giving that given the stress that furlough workers have been under, do you think that they wl have a little bit of relief now? paul: absolutely commit his euphoria. they have been going through struggling times and i ve heard some sad stories of decisions that had to be made and pursing out medication to putting food on the table. and i came to work, filled up my gas tank dana: and even people trying to find second jobs, year of our things like that? paul: of the working environment, we can t have ....