really appreciate you being with us today. thank you. cnn aviation correspondent pete monteen also with us. as we look at the videos posted of this crash, these moments, as i have heard a number of times a plane at 28,000 feet does not just fall out of the sky. what do you see in these videos that have been posted? reporter: so many people are looking at these videos. in fact, a former managing director of the ntsb tells me an airplane like this does not come out of the sky like this without some sort of help. look at the video of this airplane essentially free falling here. and you can see what appears to me to be vaporized fuel trailing behind it. this is what s really interesting, and when you take it a layer further and if you slow the video down and bring up a still here, this is a little blurry, but this is the airplane, you can siee the fuselage, one wing here. what is missing is the other wing.
so now the real question here is will russia play with international agencies and manufacturers worldwide who may have a stake in this, this airplane was built in brazil. the avionics likely come out of the united states. usually they would be party to an investigation like this. will russia bring them into the fold, or will they be shut out? that is something that will be interesting to follow here. and if they are shut out, it may lead to the worst possible scenario here that this plane was potentially shot down. a lot of really big questions now. a lot of big questions. and if in fact they were brought in, will they be given would they be begin full access? pete, appreciate it. thank you. we are going to continue to follow this breaking news out of russia. just ahead, the former secretary of defense and head of the cia, l leon pan eight. moments panetta. moments ago rudy giuliani
reporter: clearly the students here are more accustomed to the intensity of this job than i am. it can take three years for the faa to fully train recruits. acting administrator billy nolan suggests hiring is on schedule, but it might not be fast enough to kind flights on schedule this summer. we re hiring over the next two years 3,300 additional controllers, that will give us a net plus-up of 500 accounting for retirements and attrition. reporter: becoming an air traffic controller is ultra competitive. those who are selected by the faa not only have to pass an aptitude test but also medical and psychological exams. those who miss their shot this year have an even better shot next year when the faa plans to hire another 1,800 new air traffic controllers. jim? pete, thank you so much. jim, a delta flight out of houston was delayed for several hours yesterday, and the reason
candidates is a challenge. in 2022 there were nearly 58,000 applicants, only 1,500 were hired. cnn s pete monteen has the details. reporter: warnings of not enough workers for your next trip stretch from cockpits to control towers with the faa s own air traffic controllers now in short supply. the agency says nationwide two in every ten controller jobs are empty. the problem is so severe at a key facility in morning that the faa is warning summer delays at the area s three main airports could rise by 45%. it s a chilling message that we re not able to fly, you know, the routes at that level because we don t have enough air traffic controllers. reporter: now the federal government is scrambling to play catchup, opening a rare hiring window friday. last year it was flooded with 58,000 applications.
reporter: it does make me feel very official, yes. pete, thank you. keep smiling. all right. air travel, let s talk about that. hovering around pre-pandemic levels. the tsa estimates that agents will screen 2.5 million passengers between today and sunday. all this despite a spike in air fare costs. barry biffle is ceo of frontier airlines. he s with us now. barry, good to see you. i checked flight aware before the show. things are looking good. what are your expectations for today and through the rest of the holiday weekend? yeah, look, i think we re getting people back in the air, and it s good to see. the season is actually more elongated. it s unfortunate to hear about that traffic on the road. but you know, we started seeing outbound travel for thanksgiving start last thursday actually. and we re seeing the returns spread into next week. it s kind of flattening out that demand. so it actually enables more