Aviation attorney speaks on FAA ground stop

As we await that, however, let's continue and speak with an aviation expert, Alan Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong is an attorney. We understand that he has been an aviation expert for multiple decades. Mr. Armstrong, it is so good to see you. Give us a little bit of understanding and perspective on the situation that we're seeing now. This is a very delicate system we have with interlocking air traffic control facilities across the country. There are air routes. Traffic sectors such as Atlanta and New York, they encompass wide swaths of airspace. And to go through the airspace, you have to talk to air traffic control. And it appears that the Kansas City Air Traffic Control Center has lost communication capability, which happens to be right in the middle of the country. And so the result is because of the interconnectedness of our network. That the AT systems, air traffic control system, is effectively shut down right now. So, Alan, real quick, Alan, you don't see any connection because there's a lot of people and it's buzzing online with the big Outlook email breakdown yesterday. Now you have the FAA breakdown. These things happening sequentially. You see no connection, no nefarious involvement by outside players. You're just attributing this to an antiquated aviation system. That would be my first premise, my first assumption, yes. Prior to going on the air this evening, I did speak with a colleague who administers the flight operations of about 30 jet aircraft worldwide, and they do some work for the military. And you would think if there was something up that they might know, and they don't know anything. So I did try to find other sources that might suggest what this is other than just an Outage in the middle of the country with ATC. Now, we know the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has been basically on bended knee with Congress begging for funding to update the antiquated air traffic control system. How long, if they get the funding they need, and we hear about floppy disks going in to control things like dating back to the 1980s or even before that. How long before our air traffic control system is going to be up to par? We deserve better. I mean, we really do. A country this advanced deserves better than what we're getting. So how long would it take? Look at the government. Look how slow the government is to move and government bidding processes and the lowest bidder and that sort of thing and disputes about who won the bid. I mean, this could go on for years. Mr. Armstrong, I'm curious, as you've been looking at a situation like this, you know, we've, it makes us compare to previous situations, right? And it makes us think about other times we've been in situations like this. And your memory and expertise, what do you compare this to? Are there other situations that come to mind that kind of characterize this magnitude of an event when you think about the ripple effects that this is going to have for days to come? To say the effects will be extraordinary will not be an exaggeration. This is a really big deal. You've got thousands of airplanes that are... Airlines fly more than they are on the ground. They're flying most of the time, so they're suspended in space and they're involved in this elaborate dance where airplanes fly in close trail to each other with... Three to five miles of lateral separation. And now they're all just on the ground. Yeah. How long before, Alan, okay, so we get everything straightened out, airliners start taking off once again. How many days or upwards of a week is it going to take to straighten this thing out and return to normal? Yeah. Four, five, six days a week. This is a huge, huge problem. You know, to get this system back working again, the sheer inertia we have to overcome to get it back up and running is going to take quite some time. People are going to be very disappointed. All right. Alan Armstrong, you're an aviation lawyer here in Atlanta. You certainly know a lot about what's going on and have put this case into perspective as a catastrophic event which is rippling through our aviation system tonight. Alan, thanks so much. You're very welcome. Awaiting a news conference at the White House, we understand that the Department of Homeland Security Secretary and the Transportation Security are going to step out any moment. Both Sean Duffy and Mark Wayne Mullen will bring those remarks to you live when they happen.