FAA ground stop aftermath at Oakland airport

We'll come back. We're going to go now to the Bay Area. Tom Vacar joining us from the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Airport. How's it looking there, Tom? Pretty lonely. I want to show you something. If you take a look, this is the security line. This is usually packed to the gills this time of night. And you can see that there aren't hardly anybody here. There are nine of those big CT45 scanners and very few of them in operation because the situation here is a lot of folks just said, we're going home. We can't wait this out. It's not worth it. Now come on over here. This is the Southwest Airlines boarding area. Interesting story about Southwest Airlines. Back in the 90s, early 90s, both Burbank Airport and Oakland were kind of failing airports, and Southwest decided to come in and fly at a third the cost the other airlines were charging at that point in time. And they saved both of the airports, and now this is a major, major hub for Southwest Airlines around the country. But as you can see, once again, there are a few people here. But not many, and this is the main, main ticket counter for all of this, and as a result of that, there aren't any people in the security lines. One more thing I want to show you while we're here, and that would be coming out here to the roadway, where usually sheriff's deputies are telling people, don't come. Don't park. Don't block the way. And what you can see is there are a few cars here, but there's hardly anything really going on. That's the situation. And a lot of the airplanes that are probably sitting out on the taxiways and the aprons and all of that stuff are still going to be waiting for crews probably until tomorrow because that's the other problem is you have to have people that have not run out of hours and many of those people that were stranded here. We're probably going on to other places like Los Angeles, but they ran out of hours, so they've got to get crews replaced. And a lot of these airplanes should have been somewhere else in the country, but they're not somewhere else in the country. They're at the airports that they were stranded at. This is a thing that's going to take probably two, three days to fully straighten out, sad to say. One other thing that we have to talk about, and I think that this is really important, is that we have a situation where you have this failure. Now, the Duffy, the Secretary Duffy, he was saying that, well, you know, this is old equipment and it's failed and it's going to fail again. That's not exactly a good recommendation for Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday. And because of that, people need to be concerned about how well the system really will be repaired for that time. And that would be a much bigger disaster than it is right now. Back to you. Yeah, Tom, at the same time, though, at least, I mean, he was honest about we have a problem that needs to be fixed. And, you know, you've covered aviation issues for a long time, and it's no secret that the technology is, you know, from the 1980s in a lot of cases, and, you know, it needs to be repaired, and it's going to cost a lot of money. Back in 2003, they announced at the FAA that they were going to have NextGen. That was going to be the digital world for the airline industry and for the FAA and all of that stuff. And they talked about it 23 years ago. Parts of it are here, most of them are not, and it was supposed to be a wraparound that would be the primary system backed up by the old system. It's the only system that's actually in operation is the old system. So the Democrats, Republicans, Congresses, Presidents have all failed us in the last 25 years because this is what we're ending up with. And I would say very seriously that the holidays could be at a risk if something serious fails and they have another cascading failure. There's no sugarcoating this, we've put this off, just like we put off maintenance of the highways and when that happens at some point in time something breaks and then you've got to do something about it, we're at that point. Well Tom, I love that airport there, I love walking across that street right there over to the BART. Are you seeing people coming off the BART trying to get to the terminal and check in and ask some questions, get their baggage, whatever they need to do? Yeah, well, this is actually the connector that goes down to the BART, which is over by the Oakland Coliseum. You actually take BART to the Oakland Coliseum, and then you come across on what is literally a modern-day cable car. It's pulled by cables, and they come here. Very few people coming off because the primary airline here at Oakland is Southwest. And you can see, once again, let's go back inside, that here's the situation. Very few people in line, and because very few people are in line, there are obviously not a lot of people coming from anywhere. And as a result, that's the situation. And, of course, this is a feeder to L.A. and to other places in the Southland, and so that's what it is. And this is a major supplier of passengers to Southern California. All right, Tom Picard, live tonight at the airport in Oakland. Thanks for that report and your insights on what's going on with the aviation industry.