Expert explains FAA's nationwide ground stop

So we continue to monitor the breaking news, that ground stop still in effect across the entire country. Aviation safety expert and retired United Airlines captain Steve Arroyo joins us now. Steve, thank you so much for being here. Tell me, when you first heard about the FAA ordering this ground stop today, how serious did you know that this situation was? As soon as they say a national ground stop, that's serious, it's extraordinary. This hasn't been done since 9-11. This isn't because it's a terror event, but it's because they have shut down the national transportation system. No planes are moving on the ground, and anyone who's in the air has to land as soon as possible, just like 9-11. What kind of a communications failure would the FAA lead it to make that call? Well, it appears it appears that it's part of the communication system between all the individual air traffic control centers. So let's say you have Dallas Center who's now heading up north and you're being switched over to the next the next center. Well, the air traffic controllers, before they hand off the pilots via the radios. They call up the next air traffic control center and say, hey, you've got ABC Airlines coming, flight 123, they're coming in your airspace in two minutes. Roger that. We got them on radar. They're aware. They've got situation awareness. And boom, the pilots, hey, we're checking in. And seamless. But if you can't communicate that, then you're breaking down the system. And you have to have a flawless system with backups. And I believe that that's the case here. It's interesting, though, that simultaneously we've got some radar issues in terms of the national weather system and the information that they provide for pilots all over the country. I know you don't have a crystal ball, but we've talked so much about the backlog and how this really becomes a domino effect. Once the departures and everything resumes, how long do you expect it's going to take for this to work itself out? I mean, it's going to take all weekend, I imagine. Well, absolutely. Let's look back in Dallas a few years ago when we had that unprecedented type of snowstorm and ice and it would shut down everything. You can't fly airplanes, you can't drive cars. It took a while. This is on the same level. I mean, there's no weather, but you're shutting down a system and to get everything back running again, depending on how long it is, it's gonna take a while. It's like a hurricane coming through an area, like a major winter snowstorm, it takes days. So there's a lot of various elements, but the biggest element is maintaining safety. And that's what the government's doing right now. But I will say, I will say it's a wake up call because we've got the Congress, the people have allocated $12.5 billion to revamp the air traffic control system. However, if we're gonna head further into the 21st century and be leaders and be accustomed to the way we love to travel, we have to invest more money. The FAA needs more money. The Department of Transportation needs more money. Secretary Duffy is coming for $30 billion. And I believe it's justified if the flying public wants to have a robust and safe air traffic control system. We need the money. We need Congress to approve it and we need to get it fixed and implemented sooner rather than later. I had the opportunity to interview Secretary Duffy when he was in Dallas recently announcing some of the improvements that were coming to DFW and he was just explaining how outdated the system is. I mean, a lot of those air traffic control towers are still using coax cables. I mean, it was just kind of mind blowing to think that these systems are so archaic. Yet we rely on them to get people to and from destinations safely. It just is, it's the people, the people who are working in air traffic control, the pilots, all the entire team. It takes a team to have these kind of safety margins that we experience in the United States. Aviation, airline travel is a high-risk, high-reliability organization, just like health care. You have to have all the moving parts working perfectly, and when things break down, you have to be able to execute perfectly, like the government. I'm curious. What it's doing right now. Let's get it fixed. Don't mean to interrupt you, but take us inside the cockpit. I mean, you flew for United Airlines. When you're a captain, when you're in command of a plane and a ground stop is issued, what happens once you actually get the aircraft on the ground? Can you kind of walk our viewers through the process? The carriers train for stuff like this, clearly. Yeah, if you're in the air and you're landing or if you're on the ground and you're trying to make your way back. Everything is coordinated with ground control in the tower. So any movement of an aircraft is coordinated that way, and we're given instructions, and the movement of the aircraft is based on those instructions. So it's business as usual. It's just you're in a traffic jam, just like you are in your car on the highway, just sitting there twiddling your thumbs, saying, when is the traffic going to start moving? But this is serious. And safety is serious, and so everyone has to be patient and just take a deep breath. And as pilots, that's what we're doing up front. We have a job to do, but it's frustrating, just like for the passengers. I imagine there are clearly redundancies in place for when things go wrong and technology goes on the fritz. So, I mean, there are backup systems to backup systems to backup systems, right? So for the FAA to come out and say, look, no planes at all taking off or landing, that's major. Yeah, it's, you know, the same analogy. If you're in the operating room and you're the patient and, you know, they need certain equipment, but, you know, we don't have that backup equipment. We don't run with backup equipment and something goes wrong. But that's not going to be a good outcome. So in aviation, high-risk reliability organizations, back up, back up, back up. And if something isn't working properly, well, then we have to take action like we did today, this extraordinary action, and shut down the system until it's working properly. I think it is going to be a very long weekend. That is safe to say. Steve Arroyo, an aviation safety expert as well as a retired United Airlines captain, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you giving us some insight on this. No, thank you so much for having me.