Pete Buttigieg attempted to explain what happens behind the scenes when flights are delayed en masse.
The transportation secretary appeared on CNBC Friday to address questions about how to make the 50,000 takeoffs and landings that happen every day in the country smoother.
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"You know, if we’re going to keep pressing the airlines, as I have been, on their performance, their investments, their scheduling, we got to make sure, as a country, we’re doing the same thing on the public sector side," Buttigieg said. He later suggested the Federal Aviation Administration continue "investing in our airports, investing in our runways and taxiways, maybe most importantly of all, investing in our people, making sure that our air traffic controllers and other FAA personnel have the technology they need to succeed and simply making sure there are enough of them trained and at their positions."
Buttigieg was implying that training was needed at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, also known as TRACON, which manages the airspace around three major airports serving the New York City area. In a notice published in March, the agency said TRACON was only operating at 54%.
Nationwide, air traffic controllers are staffed at about 81% with 21,250 workers, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is less than the number of air traffic controllers who were working before the pandemic in 2019.
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The CEO of United Airlines similarly blamed short-staffing at the FAA in an internal memo from July 1, saying the short-staffing caused a series of flight cancellations in June.
The FAA has promised to hire more air traffic controllers since April.