'Why The Shift?': Reporter Grills Secretary Sean Duffy Over First Trump Admin's ATC Privatization Proposal

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was asked about the first Trump Administration's privatized air traffic control proposal.

Transcript

00:00During the first Trump administration I believe there was a proposal to do like

00:03a privatization of air traffic control and this time seems like there's a

00:07very different push to just you know improve the system we already have. Why

00:12the shift? So I look at the issue at play and the issue is the whole system. And you

00:22saw 55 different groups come and support our proposal, groups that are

00:27oftentimes on different sides of the table. Privatization is a fight that

00:33someone can have if they want at some other point. I don't want to divide

00:36people. I think working for the American people is to say we are going to build an

00:41air traffic control system that truly is state-of-the-art, that is the best in the

00:44world. And to have a fight about privatization is just going to divide

00:50people. And what that'll actually do is make sure that we don't actually build a

00:55brand-new air traffic control system. That's a guarantee that political fights

00:59will take a priority over the great infrastructure build that has to happen

01:03in this country. And so I'm not interested in political fights. I'm interested in

01:07doing what's right by way of the American people, the fine public. And that means

01:10keep everybody together, build this brand-new system, make sure we can we can

01:16have more capacity in the airspace. By the way, you got to think about we are going

01:19to have Evatols or drones, Ubers in the air. We're going to have drones in the airspace.

01:24So the airspace is going to become more complicated. And we need to build a system

01:30that can take on that complication, that additional use, and probably more flights

01:34in the airspace as well. What we have now I don't think can accommodate that. And so

01:40thinking over the horizon to the future, what we're going to build can accommodate far more uses of the airspace as this technology develops.

01:48Yeah.

01:49Yeah.