Transportation Secretary and former reality TV star Sean Duffy went on CNN to speak with Jake Tapper about the air traffic controller shortage that Duffy created and how it will impact Thanksgiving travel plans. Long answer short: It’s not good:
TAPPER: So you talked about Thanksgiving. Do you have any sort of numerical idea of how many Americans will not be able to be with their families for the holiday because of this?
DUFFY: I think the number is going to be substantial.
Again, you look at the trend line, Jake, and it’s only gotten worse as we’ve gone through the shutdown. We’re day 40 now. And we saw the largest number of outage of controllers was on Halloween, the 31st. Those numbers were 61. Yesterday it was 81.
And the controllers that I’ve talked to said, a lot of them, we can miss one paycheck. They told me that virtually none of them can miss two paychecks. And so they’re going to be confronted with the idea of, as you mentioned, going to get a side job, a second job to make ends meet, to put food on the table, put gas in the car, to pay their rent. And a lot of these controllers who are young, Jake, they don’t make a lot of money. They’re just getting into the business of being an air traffic controller. So they make less than $100,000 and they live in a really expensive place. They’re the single income earner. And they have a kid or two at home. It’s very challenging.
