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CNN Live At Daybreak
Public Confidence Hangs in the Balance of Aviation Security Bill
Aired November 13, 2001 - 08:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: And one of my favorite men has just joined us here, Jack Cafferty. I'm not sucking up to you, Jack, I really do like you. I really do.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN FINANCIAL ANCHOR: I like you too.
ZAHN: Usually, it represents a shift in the morning, when you join us here on the set. Jack Cafferty, of course, joins us every day at this hour, except on Saturday and Sunday because the man does need some rest, and he is joining us for "Here's what I don't get," Tuesday's installment. What don't you get today, Jack?
CAFFERTY: Well, I don't know that it's something I don't get. I just find it very sadly ironic, I guess, in a way, that -- we collectively breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when we found out that a plane crash that killed 265 people was the result, perhaps, of a mechanical problem of some kind. I mean, did you ever envision living in a time when a plane would go down, and when they came out later in the day and said we think this was a mechanical failure, everybody would go, "Oh, thank God." I mean, there is something very perverse about the emotion of that.
ZAHN: Well, I wrestled. Yeah, I wrestled -- didn't you wrestle with your own feelings in this one?
CAFFERTY: Absolutely.
ZAHN: We live here.
CAFFERTY: Yeah, and --
ZAHN: And we saw bridges closed, and tunnels closed --.
CAFFERTY: That's the other thing. The -- a way of life now is to shut the city down at a moment's notice. They shut the bridges, they shut the tunnels, they shut the U.N., they shut -- they just closed everything. They shut the airports. Apparently there was some debate, from what I was reading, at the White House yesterday about whether again in the moments after the crash to order all planes down like they did on September 11th. They decided at the last moment not to do that.
Where all this is going is to the erosion of confidence in the American public in what is a 1 trillion dollar a year industry, when you take into account all the freight, all the passengers, all the economics in the airline industry in this country, it's a trillion dollar industry.
ZAHN: Sure.
CAFFERTY: Where is the airline legislation, more than two months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I picked up the New York Times and the Daily News this morning, and editorials in both papers excoriating Congress, for the fact that nothing has been done. The Senate passed a bill on a vote of 100 to nothing.
ZAHN: Right.
CAFFERTY: A bipartisan bill, remember that word, it lasted about an hour in Washington. The House Republicans apparently are balking at this, because the legislation calls for federalizing the employees that would man the security checkpoints in the nations airports. You can take political difference with that, you can philosophical difference with that. You can argue private sector versus public sector.
But the fact of the matter is, there will be no restoration of confidence in the airline system in this country until step one, which is for the government, our leaders, to come forward and say "here's what we're doing to fix a system that, obviously, was broken on September 11th."
And, you know, sitting on their hands over two months later, and now, another plane crashes and the terrorist anxiety that shot through this city and right around the world yesterday, that could be diluted to a degree. There wouldn't have been as much room for debate about what might have caused that incident yesterday if some meaningful piece of legislation had been put in place and the actions that would follow that, to say to the public, "we are fixing the security system that doesn't work," that hasn't happened yet. And that's an obscenity.
ZAHN: I was talking to someone in a key senator's office and -- they were saying, because of this crash, they think it will put enormous pressure on some kind of action to be taken, even for the fence sitter, saying maybe some version of this bill is better than nothing.
CAFFERTY: Well, it's just -- it's criminal that we have nothing, and the fact of the president's -- apparently, the president's own party is -- the culprit in this thing in the House of Representatives. It's the House Republicans who are standing on this principle that private enterprise is capable of doing a better job than the -- that may be true, but it's time to do something.
And if I were President Bush, I would be furious that members of my own party have gotten in the way of something that is vital to the restoration of confidence, in the flying public. You know, it's -- it's not going to get any better until you and I and everybody in the room and beyond feels that it's safer. Not necessarily that it's safe, because people can deal with the idea that once in a while a plane crashes, just like automobiles and trains and every --
ZAHN: Sure.
CAFFERTY: That happens. And it's a risk that most people in the past are willing to take. What they are not willing to confront is something that is fixable that's not being addressed that puts them at risk, and until they do something, this whole idea of the flying public's confidence is a very open question.
ZAHN: Well it was originally thought that Thanksgiving, too, would sort of be the artificial deadline. Because that is really going to determine, I guess, what that portion business from November 25th to the end of December is for the airlines' bottom line.
CAFFERTY: Yeah, typically the fourth quarter -- Sure, they're going into the Winter, and the fourth quarter is a tough quarter for them except for the travel that they get at Christmas time and at Thanksgiving, two very heavy travel seasons, and you know, they're going to have to go back now, perhaps, to the government. I was interviewing an analyst this morning, or an editor, of an airline publication saying that, you know, we're going to see airlines, perhaps, go out of business.
The whole idea of consolidation of the industry is now on the table again. United and some of the others wanted to talk about consolidating with some of the other airlines. The regulators, the antitrust regulators in Washington said, "Nah, I don't think so. We're going to have too many big airlines, not enough competition." With the financial problems that are occurring to the industry now, they may have to revisit the idea of letting some of these airlines consolidate as a way to survive.
ZAHN: Well, you've given me the perfect transition to move onto business news, something that you do a lot -- spend a lot of your time doing.
CAFFERTY: See, I am going up there to help her make that transition. See you tomorrow.
ZAHN: Thanks Jack. See you tomorrow morning.
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