that miseducation of america, could we get back to education of america, we need some of that. pete, thank you so much we ll be watching. and pete has a few kids of his own, a lot of kids. john: personal experience with this. as do the rest of us. sandra: and we are as well. john: parents are getting angry about what s going on in some of these school boards, really are. when you see now 17 high schools in fairfax county, prince william county and loudoun county didn t notify kids that they had received national merit scholarships. sandra: what is going on. john: so it screwed up the college applications. sandra: change the course of their life. kids had to go to other schools because they didn t know they received merit awards and therefore merit scholarships. john: for sure. seems it s a constant drum beat of travel horror stories in recent months as airlines deal with pilot shortages, storms and other outages.
funeral or first responder on the job around the country and to see the nation s air system blanked out like this when we have a transportation secretary busy checking all the identity boxes, it just feels like they are off base here and not in focus. sandra: we are waiting on white house response as peter doocy just told us, karine jean-pierre is expected to lead a white house briefing, set for 2:00 eastern time, running a little late. sean, your reaction to this. liz mentioned one passenger we heard from saying we are scared. you hear about the pilot shortages, the staffing shortages and people fear things will not function as they should and then you see the faa statement. a new statement from sam graves on this meltdown saying it appears at this time the notice to air missions or notam, system malfunction was not a security breach, i highlights what he s labelling as a huge vulnerability in the air transportation system saying
today are still 40% to 50% in real terms, 40% to 50% lower than they were just about a decade ago. and, yeah, they went way, way down during the pandemic. the inflation numbers could vary in the middle of the pandemic, probably not the right fee to compare it to. air travel remains a great value. you re frequently going to pay less for your airline ticket than one night at your hotel room or rental car. air travel remains a great value. but i think the ultra low prices that happen, you know, during the deficit, the pandemic, are in the rear view mirror and should be in the rear view mirror. airlines wouldn t be able to survive at that kind of pricing. pilot shortages, that s not a big issue for you but other carriers. any impact on holiday travel from here on out? this won t be an impact in the near term. united, we re able to hire pilots. we hired 2400 this year, we ll hire another 2500 next year. because we re at the top of the pyramid for pilot perspective. we re able to hire.
center, 400 new pilots have been trained here since june. we have doubled the size of the airline. reporter: seasons pilots are also in demand. piedmont just announced a $100,000 signing bonus for new captains. the opportunities have never been better. reporter: new industry numbers exceed pre-pandemic. cancelling 55,000 flights in due to pilot shortages. but american airlines said it has hired 12,000 employees this year companywide. southwest airlines has hired for man 15,000. and at united airlines, 2,000 new customer service representatives are helping passengers in new ways called agent on demand. you scan a qr code for a video call. agents can now connect with a stranded passenger at o hare
forth in self-defense. that sounds more like an indictment to me. i think the problem is that the refunds, the letter to the industry and so forth the pete buttigieg doesn t address the issue. the issue is still going to be present irrespective of what the airlines do because it s a much bigger issue. it involves a whole bunch of moving parts, our airline system. the air traffic control system, the air traffic controllers, the hiring issues there, the pilot issues in terms of pilot shortages, time limitations that pilots flight attendants can fly and properly positioned and crews have to be properly positioned and you overlay on top of that the weather and and if there s a letter to be sent, maybe it ought to be sent to mother nature. gillian: well, mark, to be fair here. that sounds everything that you laid out is true and fair but also fits under the category