CNN's Sara Sidner reacted to the "strong words" her colleague and former Department of Transportation inspector general Mary Schiavo had for transportation secretary Sean Duffy about the air traffic control crisis.
Duffy has pledged to transform and remodel the outdated air traffic control system after a major failure last week at Newark Liberty International Airport left thousands of travelers stranded for days, and Schiavo said president Donald Trump's transportation secretary faced a major test where failure is not an option.
"Secretary Duffy now literally has the biggest and hardest job in government," Schaivo said. "This has been attempted many times, and I was inspector general through both Republican and Democratic administrations, and you are correct, this has gone on for literally decades that the [Federal Aviation Administration] and others have kicked the can down the road."
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"So this is a problem with at least five constituencies," Schiavo added. "He's going to have to work with the controllers. He's already got a plan to get those, that 3,000 shortage up and hiring incentives to stay on past your retirement, you know, the age cutoff. So you have to be under 32 and you can retire at 55, [and] Duffy said, 'Well, I'll pay you more to stay.' Good move, get that shortage stopped. Equipment is a huge problem. The General Accounting Office did a study in 2024, and they said out of the 138 systems of the FAA, 51 were unsustainable and 54 more possibly unsustainable."
The stakes couldn't be higher, she said.
"Duffy must succeed," Schiavo said. "He has no option – he has to succeed."
Sidner was stunned by the estimation that a third of all systems are considered unsustainable.
"Wow," she said. "That is scary."
Duffy also plans to ask airlines to reduce the number of flights at peak times, which Schiavo agreed was necessary, and she said Congress must appropriate more money to build out the air traffic control system to modern standards despite the Trump administration's efforts to cut government spending.
"You know, when I started doing that, when I was inspector general, to prod them to be proactive, they only acted once," Schiavo said. "There was a disaster once, there was a loss of life, and we've had that loss of life and now everyone is responding. They must be proactive going forward because we can make collisions literally extinct, and so that's why I started calling [the FAA] the 'tombstone agency.' Don't react when people die, be proactive and let's get this done, and I think that hopefully they can do it because they have to. There is no alternative."
"Very strong words from you there," Sidner replied.