Beavis and Buttigieg: Biden Transport Chief's Biggest Blunders Amid FAA Meltdown

Thousands of flights across the US were grounded Wednesday morning and afternoon following a computer failure Tuesday night which led to the complete shutdown of US airspace to commercial air traffic. The situation – the first of its kind since the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, was blamed on the failure of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system – a tool providing pilots with updates on weather conditions, runway closures, and other pertinent information required to ensure the safety of aircraft and passengers.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg assured the public that he has been “in touch with” Federal Aviation Administration officials about the situation, and vowed that he was on the case “to determine root causes and recommend next steps.”

Biden’s transport supremo was predictably blamed for the disaster by Biden detractors and GOP politicians, who took another opportunity to attack Buttigieg over his lack of experience in transport matters, and suggested it was a bad idea to “pick cabinet secretaries based on upon demographics – instead of actual qualifications” – a reference to Buttigieg’s status as the first openly gay member of the administration. Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina put together a bill which would require Buttigieg to fly commercial from now on until the nightmarish situation around US commercial air travel is resolved.

Is it really fair to blame the transportation secretary for the NOTAM glitch? Actually, yes.

For starters, NOTAM, an ancient notification and alert system which came online immediately after World War II, had been scrutinized for decades, with aviation professionals criticizing the system over its tendency to overload pilots with useless info irrelevant to their flights, and its excessive complexity. Robert Sumwalt, the now-former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, blasted the system in 2018 as “just a bunch of garbage that nobody pays any attention to.” The same year, Congress ordered the FAA to get its act together and reform NOTAM, and to streamline old software built up over the years which were complicating its effectiveness.

Nearly five years later, and nearly two years into the Biden administration’s term, the reforms are clearly still underway. But Buttigieg has been on the case, prioritizing the most important issue for the administration: equity (not to be confused with equality). In late 2021, the "Notice to Airmen" system was renamed the "Notice to Air Missions" – ostensibly to make it “inclusive of all aviators” – including women and members of the transgender community. The measure predictably failed to have a noticeable impact on the NOTAM system’s efficiency, but got the White House the attention it was looking for among its base. The Biden Pentagon has put a similar policy in place for its pilots, rolling out maternity flight suits for pregnant airwomen – presumably so they would have a more comfy time bombing people in other countries.

But back to Buttigieg: According to a “NOTAM Modernization Update” from December 2022, the system was in the middle of a two-phase upgrade to “improve the delivery of safety critical information to aviation stakeholders,” including a one-stop shop for finding NOTAMs through a centralized FAA search system, just before crashing.

The FAA is headed by acting Administrator Billy Nolan, who was tapped for the job by Buttigieg in the spring of 2022 to oversee a series of reforms, including assuring that flight attendants get more rest in between flights, safety, and more equity, but apparently less focus on the organizational matters, as the NOTAM blunder attests.

Wednesday’s shutdown wasn’t the first time the FAA and Buttigieg’s DoT have presided over hellish conditions in the skies. Throughout 2022 and especially in its closing weeks, airlines canceled or delayed thousands of flights, stranding travelers and causing cost overruns. The cause? Pilots quitting en masse over COVID vaccine mandates throughout the year, and a troubled route management system used by Southwest Airlines which collapsed in December.

Buttigieg’s response to that crisis included “monitoring” the situation, and promising to “hold” Southwest “accountable” for the “unacceptable disruptions and customer service conditions.” No further action has been announced, and several weeks later, the airline is reported to have quietly promoted and given bonuses to top executives despite the disaster.

Questions of Buttigieg’s adequacy for the job he’s in isn’t limited to his response to commercial aviation-related matters. During his run for president in 2020, warning signs that he may be in over his head abounded. On the campaign trail, Mayor Pete posted jolly videos of himself filling in potholes, joking that “the common pothole” is “one of the leading enemies of the American mayor.” However, local media complained throughout his eight-year stint as mayor that “many residents feel the city has the worst pothole situation in the state,” and that Domino’s Pizza even rolled out a $5,000 "Paving for Pizza" grant in 2019 to deal with the problem. The South Bend Tribune wrote in 2018 that potholes in some areas had become so bad that “roads have literally been impassible in some spots.” In 2020, national media revealed that Buttigieg had the road in front of his house repaved speedily, even though the city deemed the street to be in satisfactory condition.

Being mayor of a city of 100,000 people and transport secretary are two wildly different jobs, as even Biden-sympathetic media pointed out once Buttigieg was tapped by Biden for the latter position. The federal department has a staff of about 55,000 people, and an annual budget of nearly $90 billion – and even more since the passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in late 2021. The latter included a $550 billion bonanza of spending for everything from roads, bridges, railroads, pipes and sewers, ports, airports to broadband Internet access, electric school buses, and other goodies. This included $68 billion in so-called “resilience” spending – i.e. pollution remediation and climate change-related items, and a $1 billion “Reconnecting Communities” program, with only $284 billion allocated for actual new roads, bridges, railway track, etc.

Buttigieg had little if any role in pushing the bill during the final leg of debate in Congress, instead taking off two months for paternity leave in the late summer and early fall of 2021 with his husband and adopted twin newborns.

The transportation secretary took the time off in the middle of a supply chain crisis, which had wreaked havoc on retailers and producers as ports and trucking companies were left unable to hire enough personnel to run operations to full capacity. The bottlenecks included both ready-made consumer goods and food, and components and raw materials for American factories making automobiles, aircraft, and household appliances. Buttigieg dismissed personal criticism for taking a break during the crisis, and blamed supply chain woes on growing demand and the administration’s “successful” push to guide the US economy out of recession.

Over a year-a-half after its passage, the infrastructure law has hit a roadblock. Congressional Republicans are accusing the White House and the Federal Highway Administration – which is subordinated to Buttigieg’s DoT, of deliberately blocking contracts for new roads, and charging Buttigieg with deliberately blocking road construction, owing to climate change concerns.

Late last month, preparing for imminent investigations by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives over the DoT’s EV and climate change-related spending agenda, Buttigieg assured that he was “absolutely ready to take our case to the Hill,” and to “make sure that this round of infrastructure investment is equitable.”

Buttigieg may not have had much success in his job as transportation secretary. But he does have at least one national "accomplishment" that no one will ever be able to take away from him – helping to gyp Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders out of the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.

Despite being an unknown with no federal experience under his belt, Buttigieg secured a surprising string of victories during the first primary contests, helping to derail Sanders’ momentum as one security state official after another curiously endorsed his candidacy. In early 2020, it was revealed that the Democratic National Convention had been “directly involved” in the creation of the controversial vote tabulation app used in the crucial Iowa Caucus – which Buttigieg “won” with two delegates more than Sanders. Investigators discovered that voting data in Iowa had been manipulated in such a way as to take votes away from the Vermont senator. Mainstream media dismissed the story, suggesting the caucus “wasn’t rigged” and that the app was just “glitchy” and “democracy is just messy.”