Trump, turbulence and travel: Are US skies still safe?
Is it possible to enjoy a vacation in a country like this?
You can imagine two circles of a Venn diagram: One represents the Trump-spurred disruption and sense of perma-crisis he brings. A second one represents basic aviation safety and having a good time. Surely, the two circles can't stay separate forever. If and when they overlap, will they overlap on your holiday to the US?
The US suffered its most deadly air crash in years in January when an American Airlines Flight collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Virginia, killing 67 people. A preliminary investigation raised questions about congestion in the area and the air traffic control staffing.
A perhaps more pressing example in the era of Trump: air traffic controllers at Newark Liberty airport near New York lost radar vision and radio contact with flights on April 28. Some controllers were so upset afterwards that they took trauma leave.
After the scare, the chief executive of United, which uses Newark as a hub, cut back flights for safety. One contributing factor is that Newark is a temporarily closed runway, set to reopen in June.
Loading
But to give a sense of the challenge for the US more broadly, consider that there are 3800 commercial flights a day in Australia. In the US, that number is closer to 27,500, with air traffic controllers monitoring and directing 5000 flights simultaneously in peak periods.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been trying to upgrade its network of staff and equipment for decades, while attracting more air traffic controllers. There are now 14,000 air traffic controllers in the US, nearly 2000 of them hired last year. However, that still leaves a shortfall of 3000.
Trump has largely inherited this problem, though he previously had four years as president to address it.
However, it's far from clear that Trump is inclined or capable of improving the situation for US air traffic control. Immediately after the January crash near Washington, Trump blamed 'diversity, equity and inclusion' hires as contributing to the ability of air traffic controllers to function.
In a statement at the time, Trump claimed that under former president Joe Biden the FAA 'specifically recruited and hired individuals with 'severe intellectual' disabilities [and] psychiatric issues ...''
When Trump returned to office in January, he came with billionaire campaign funder Elon Musk in tow, pushing a radical government-slashing project called DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency).
FAA air traffic controllers are themselves exempt from DOGE cuts and are being recruited. But at more senior levels, the Washington Post reports, in keeping with the DOGE purges, there has been an exodus of people.
American air traffic control is ripe for reform. As the Brookings Institute notes: 'The consensus of countless commissions and expert reports is that air traffic management is a 24/7 high-tech service 'business' trapped in a regulatory agency that is constrained by federal budget and acquisition rules.' That is, the budget for its modernisation keeps getting eaten up by the cost of maintaining legacy systems.
United chief executive Scott Kirby reassured reporters in New York on May 13: 'At Newark, first and foremost, it is safe. It is absolutely safe when these issues happen. Our pilots are trained with back-up procedures to keep the airline safe, and so whether you lose communications or radar, we have back-up procedures.'
To his credit, Kirby has not shied away from the issue. Kirby has publicly highlighted the jam United and the US aviation sector has been put in by the FAA, and by Trump.
In April, as the world watched and waited for the next shoe to drop in Trump's tariff strategy, Kirby offered not one but two earnings estimates, depending on whether the US president's moves triggered a recession or not.
Trump, in his first 100 days in office, has imposed hiring freezes across government, stripped federal employees of job protections and fundamentally downsized the US government while centralising White House power.
The head of the US Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy – an ex-congressman, prosecutor and former reality TV star, natch – has announced a plan expected to cost tens of billions of dollars to fix the US air traffic control system within four years. Trump supports the plan.
But the devil is in the delivery.
And to be sure, many air traffic controller bodies around the world are in the process of rebuilding staff. Airservices Australia, for example, is recruiting and training controllers. 'We expect controller numbers to be back to surplus capacity by mid-year,' a company spokesman said.
But in the US, the problem is longstanding and deep-seated. Now uncertainty abounds for Americans and visiting travellers alike.
And it's not just the fear of accidents. It's also the waiting, the delays and the disruptions on the ground that mark so much travel in the US.
As for Newark Liberty Airport, Kirby cut back flights in light of the safety scare and issued two messages exhorting regulators to take further actiondespite his insistence that it's safe. Not everyone agrees.
William McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, told NPR he just didn't 'see the seriousness and the sense of purpose from this administration' to address the FAA problems.
Despite Kirby's commentary on the FAA and US aviation, he is supportive of Trump's aspirations to bring back well-paid jobs to the US, saying the goal is 'laudable'. He notes that United is 'one of the few companies left in the country that creates the kind of jobs where you can make a six-digit income, you can support a family, buy a house and [send] your kids to college, even if you only have a high school education'.
Kirby says he is taking a wait-and-see approach to Trump on the economy and tariffs. Speaking the day after Trump announced a reduction in tariffs with China, Kirby said: 'Everyone should kind of take a breath because we're not at the end game yet. We're not at the new normal yet'.
Whatever the outcome, United is betting big on the future. After being the only American airline to fly to Australia through COVID lockdown, United is piling on more capacity for flights to Australia.
Already, from November to March, United says it was the largest carrier between the US and Australia as measured by available seat miles.
While the majority of those flights were Americans visiting Australia, Australians travelling to the US are well represented.
United flies between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne from its Los Angeles and San Francisco hubs. In December, it will begin a service from San Francisco to Adelaide.
Even if air travel is becoming more difficult in the US because of creaky infrastructure and delays, United is evolving with the times. A small example: the United app allows you to track the progress of the flight, then provides updated gate information, down to a floor map of the airport you arrive at.
The effect is not just to remove some uncertainty and confusion but also gives an added sense of control in an experience – air travel in the US – that is increasingly marked by a feeling of helplessness among delayed and diverted passengers.
In the realm of long-haul, United is lifting its game to attract more of those dollars.
At the Duggal Greenhouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, United organised an event that included segments of its new Polaris Studio class seating, displays of bigger video screens, samples of new food – and drink including Aperol Spritzes – talks by executives, walk-throughs and talks by subject-matter experts, all while United's corporate versions of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue played on speakers. There was even a supply of the airline's signature ice cream sundaes.
Before Kirby took to the stage to announce ambitious improvements in seating, voices began chanting on one side of the room. They grew louder as flight attendant union-members burst into the venue, chanting: 'What do we want? A contract, When do we want it? Now!'
Loading
For a Trumpian America in convulsions, it somehow seemed on-brand. Is a renewed focus on higher wages part of the 'new normal'?
But the fear and loathing in US politics, along with questions about governance, create anxiety for visitors to the US.
While anger and concern for Trump's tariffs, and his threats to Canada and Greenland remain, like so many other things in the Trump era, what was a certainty turned to something less sure.
Reports of huge falls in arrivals coincided with Trump's first 100 days of chaos.
US International Trade Administration data show the number of Australians travelling to the US actually rose 1 per cent to 89,363 in April over the previous year. In the four months to April, the number edged down 0.2 per cent over the same period in 2024.
The same figures show the number of Europeans visiting the US fell 15.9 per cent in the year to March compared with the same period in 2024.
But over the first four months of the year, aside from Canada, it's not clear the backlash is sustained. European visitors to the US rose 11.5 per cent in the year to April.
The difference possibly arose from Easter, a major travel holiday in Europe, having fallen in March last year, skewing expectations for this year's statistics.
Still, the Trump factor remains.
The US president and his administration relish their roles as disruptors.
And they are disruptors coming after decades of American politics that frequently allowed industries an outsized influence in their own regulation.
There is disruption aplenty in US aviation. Now, no matter who is president, the country needs effective reform to address the problem.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
9 News
an hour ago
- 9 News
White House lands on Trump-Putin summit location as officials race to prepare for historic Alaska meeting
American officials scrambling this weekend to identify and lock down a venue for Friday's summit between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart quickly discovered a major snag: summertime is peak tourist season in Alaska, and options both available and equipped to host the two world leaders were severely limited. When word reached certain prominent Alaskans that Trump and Putin were coming, a few began reaching out to the president's allies with a proposition: could their home be an option? It's unclear if those offers ever reached White House officials, who were calling sites in Juneau, the state capital, along with Anchorage and Fairbanks. Organisers of the summit soon came to believe the only city in the massive state with viable options for the summit would be Anchorage. And only Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, on the northern edge of the city, would meet the security requirements for the historic meeting, though the White House had hoped to avoid the optics of hosting the Russian leader and his entourage on a US military installation. That is where the two men will meet Friday, two White House officials said. The struggle underscored the rush now underway to nail down the details of Friday's meeting, the first time the top US and Russian leaders have met in more than four years. The summit is still largely a work in progress as US and Russian officials make haste to prepare for the high-profile encounter. The two countries' top diplomats – Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – spoke to discuss "certain aspects of preparation," according to Russia's foreign ministry. Usually, a high-stakes summit with a US adversary would be preceded by extensive negotiations over the agenda and outcomes. But Trump himself has said he is approaching the meeting as a "feel-out" session, with few advance expectations for how it will proceed. The White House on Tuesday termed it a "listening session." "The president feels like, 'look, I've got to look at this guy across the table. I need to see him face to face. I need to hear him one-on-one. I need to make an assessment by looking at him,'" Rubio said in a morning radio interview with Sid Rosenberg, offering one explanation for why Trump's five known phone calls with Putin this year wouldn't suffice in determining the Russian leader's intentions. Landing on Alaska Trump's administration and the Kremlin landed on Alaska as the site for the summit after a lengthy behind-the-scenes back-and-forth, according to people familiar with the matter. There were few places that would work for the sit-down, the people said, particularly given a war crimes warrant issued for Putin's arrest by the International Criminal Court in 2023. With that fact looming, Russia balked at a European destination – even in a city like Vienna or Geneva, where US and Russian leaders have met dating back to the Cold War. While Putin himself raised the United Arab Emirates as an "entirely suitable" location, many inside the White House hoped to avoid another lengthy trek to the Middle East after Trump's visit in May. In the end, sources said, it came down to Hungary – whose Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is close to both Trump and Putin – and the United States as possible hosts, according to two US officials. American officials were pleased and somewhat surprised when the Russian president agreed to a meeting on US soil – on land that once was part of the Russian empire, no less. "I thought it was very respectful that the president of Russia is coming to our country as opposed to us going to his country or even a third-party place," Trump said this week, as his team was rushing to finalise details of the summit. Others were not so taken. "The only better place for Putin than Alaska would be if the summit were being held in Moscow," said Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, who fell out with Trump during his first term. "So, the initial setup, I think, is a great victory for Putin." Previous Putin meetings The last time an American president met with Putin – President Joe Biden's 2021 summit in Geneva – the date and venue were announced three weeks ahead of time. But the planning between Russian and American officials started months before that. Biden, on a week-long swing through Europe, spent the days leading up to the sit-down in intensive preparation with top advisers, blocking out time in the mornings to parse potential directions the conversation could take and anticipate some of Putin's moves. He consulted other leaders, including the German chancellor, for pointers on how to approach the notoriously wily Russian leader. By the time the summit arrived, aides had planned the day down to the most minute detail, including what order the leaders would arrive, how long each session would last and what type of flower would sit on the table (it was white roses). American officials even ensured there were bottles of orange Gatorade – labelled "POTUS" – inside a refrigerator at the 18th-century villa where the meeting took place. During Trump's first term, he and Putin sat one-on-one in Helsinki, Finland, during a summit in 2018 that ended with a remarkable moment when Trump sided with Putin over US intelligence agencies on the question of Russian election interference. Trump also met Putin alone in 2017, during their first encounter at the G20 summit in Hamburg. Mystery over meeting's origins While American and Russian officials have been in extensive conversations to prepare for the sit-down since it was agreed to last week, the encounter that prompted the event remains something of a mystery. Trump's foreign envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow last Wednesday for a meeting with Putin that resulted in the decision to meet, though what exactly Putin said in the meeting is still largely unknown. European officials spent much of the last week trying to ascertain the parameters of a peace deal that Putin offered up, but some said they were frustrated by the lack of clarity offered by Witkoff, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Trump's. Trump plans to hear from European leaders in a virtual meeting on Wednesday, arranged by the Germans so the president can get their perspective ahead of the Friday meeting. And he has promised to get on the phone with them, along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, immediately after the summit concludes. But Zelensky isn't expected to be in Alaska for the summit, so any potential trilateral meeting is off the table for now. Instead, Trump will spend at least part of the summit meeting with Putin one-on-one, the White House said Tuesday, allowing time for the two men to carry out a discussion unheard by anyone else aside from their translators. "That's part of the plan," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said when asked whether the two presidents would meet as a pair. "As for the other mechanics and logistics, I will let our team speak to that when they're ironed out." It's not atypical for leaders to meet alone with their counterparts, but Trump and Putin's relationship has been the subject of intense scrutiny. And during Trump's first term, even senior officials said they sometimes were left in the dark about what was discussed when aides were left out. In Trump's previous two meetings with Putin, both encounters included translators, but not high-ranking aides. After the Germany meeting, Trump reportedly asked his translator for his notes. For his part, Putin has spent the days ahead of Friday's meeting placing phone calls to his remaining global allies – including some who have staged their own high-profile summits with Trump. That included North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the Kremlin said \, who met three times with Trump during his first term, but still hasn't abandoned his nuclear weapons.
Sydney Morning Herald
9 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Wheel of Misfortune will spin over Docklands again, and I'm excited
The news this week that Melbourne's much-maligned, mocked, and long-motionless giant ferris wheel will soon(-ish) turn again – following a complex $11 million deal with Swiss and American backers – has me in a spin. The story spoke (sorry, can't resist) to me. But what did I feel, exactly? A mix of disbelief, doubt, disdain, maybe even dread? A lot of D words, which is appropriate given the oversized role the attraction (or distraction) plays in the life of Docklands. The $100 million wheel opened in 2008, was shut down 40 days later when structural flaws were detected, reopened after extensive and expensive repairs (practically a rebuild) in 2013, and closed again in 2021, a victim of COVID and lack of interest. You might say the wheel is symptomatic of Docklands itself. It should work, but it doesn't. But for all that, one D word I don't apply to the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel – or M-SOW, as I prefer to think of it – is disaster. Loading Unlike most Melburnians, I have been on the wheel. I was gifted a spin with my family for a birthday some years ago. It was winter, it was night, the sky was clear, and we could see for miles: shipping containers as far as the eye could see in one direction; suburban sprawl to the Dandenongs in another; the stretch of the bay to Dromana to the south; the strange solitary highrise blip of the Broadmeadows Civic Plaza to the north. And, of course, the dense forest of towers of New Quay, the CBD and Southbank right up close. People love to complain about the view, to insist the 120-metre-tall wheel is in the wrong spot, that it should be on the banks of the Yarra, at Birrarung Marr, perhaps, or by Polly Woodside, where its much smaller sibling, the 35-metre-high Skyline Melbourne, operates. But I'm not sure that I buy that. What you see from M-SOW is Melbourne as it really is. A sprawl. A nice bay, with some lovely beaches. A cluster of hills in the distance, but not overly endowed with the geographical magnificence of Sydney, or the lush green and undulating topography of Brisbane.
The Age
9 hours ago
- The Age
The Wheel of Misfortune will spin over Docklands again, and I'm excited
The news this week that Melbourne's much-maligned, mocked, and long-motionless giant ferris wheel will soon(-ish) turn again – following a complex $11 million deal with Swiss and American backers – has me in a spin. The story spoke (sorry, can't resist) to me. But what did I feel, exactly? A mix of disbelief, doubt, disdain, maybe even dread? A lot of D words, which is appropriate given the oversized role the attraction (or distraction) plays in the life of Docklands. The $100 million wheel opened in 2008, was shut down 40 days later when structural flaws were detected, reopened after extensive and expensive repairs (practically a rebuild) in 2013, and closed again in 2021, a victim of COVID and lack of interest. You might say the wheel is symptomatic of Docklands itself. It should work, but it doesn't. But for all that, one D word I don't apply to the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel – or M-SOW, as I prefer to think of it – is disaster. Loading Unlike most Melburnians, I have been on the wheel. I was gifted a spin with my family for a birthday some years ago. It was winter, it was night, the sky was clear, and we could see for miles: shipping containers as far as the eye could see in one direction; suburban sprawl to the Dandenongs in another; the stretch of the bay to Dromana to the south; the strange solitary highrise blip of the Broadmeadows Civic Plaza to the north. And, of course, the dense forest of towers of New Quay, the CBD and Southbank right up close. People love to complain about the view, to insist the 120-metre-tall wheel is in the wrong spot, that it should be on the banks of the Yarra, at Birrarung Marr, perhaps, or by Polly Woodside, where its much smaller sibling, the 35-metre-high Skyline Melbourne, operates. But I'm not sure that I buy that. What you see from M-SOW is Melbourne as it really is. A sprawl. A nice bay, with some lovely beaches. A cluster of hills in the distance, but not overly endowed with the geographical magnificence of Sydney, or the lush green and undulating topography of Brisbane.
