Tipsheet

Is Biden for Real With This Post About Air Travel?

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  December 25, 2023 6:30 PM

President Joe Biden, or whoever is posting from his X accounts, continues to completely lack self-awareness. On Saturday, his official account issued a reminder about last year's debacle when airline passengers were indeed stranded, something he called "unacceptable." He went on to tout, though, how he called on airlines to step up, also posting how "nine major airlines heeded our call and will guarantee free rebooking, meals, and hotels if they're at fault for a travel interruption."

Last year, Southwest saw a 2,500 flight cancellation debacle, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg even getting called out by fellow liberals. He also had ignored warnings about the crisis. The Department of Transportation (DOT) just announced last Monday that Southwest was fined $140 million.

As Spencer covered at the time back in May, Biden and Buttigieg announced the DOT's "FlightRights.Gov" dashboard, which, as Spencer aptly categorized it, is "really just a big government bully scam that forces airlines to pay for the Biden administration's mishandling of the nation's civil aviation system."

The December 23 post is almost identical to Biden's comments back in May, which Spencer referenced in his piece. 

It's almost like this is similar to an official Biden post from late last month when he placed the blame on "corporations" and "price gouging" when it comes to those not bringing their prices down. The post was hit with context from Community Notes.

Recommended

Merry Christmas, And Democrats Can Go To Hell Derek Hunter
Pro-Life Leader Targeted by Biden's DOJ Delivers Shocking Testimony Before Congress Mia Cathell

It's also not as simple as Biden and Buttigieg would like us to believe, as Spencer went into great detail about:

But it's not that simple, nor are air travel woes solely the fault of airlines. Companies such as Delta, United, Southwest, or American don't decide what's going on in the skies, operate air traffic control, or operate the systems that are supposed to keep things moving. The Biden administration, and specifically the FAA, does. Or at least it's supposed to keep things moving. 

In January of this year, the FAA grounded all flights for the first time since the morning of September 11, 2001, due to a computer glitch that took the NOTAM — Notice to Airmen, changed to a gender-neutral "Notice to Air Missions" by Buttigieg because priorities — system out of service. Presumably, delays and/or cancelations caused by such an outage would not be blamed on airlines, but the Biden administration gets to set the definition so who knows. 

Then, in March, even more bad news from the Biden FAA. As a result of the administration's inability to see issues on the horizon, the Biden administration was left to demand airlines cancel regular flights during the busy summer travel season in response to the FAA's air traffic controller staffing shortfall. 

Even though there's no reason the FAA, Buttigieg, or Biden wouldn't have known there'd be a shortage of air traffic controllers this summer, they didn't do anything to avert the shortfall. Instead, they've pushed responsibility onto airlines that requires them to reduce flights by up to 10 percent of an airline's takeoff and landing rights to "avoid congestion" at airports around New York City and Washington, D.C. from May 15 through September 15.

Would delays due to such "congestion" — which might not be averted anyway if ATC staffing shortages aren't remedied soon — be subject to Biden's forthcoming rule requiring airlines to compensate passengers?

That's not the only issue with such a post, though. As of Monday afternoon, the post has received close to 3,500 replies. The quoted replies are also full of users buying the numbers about affected Palestinians to blame Biden for that. Many have chimed in to remind the president and his administration of another crisis to do with air travel, which is to say the special treatment that illegal immigrants receive at airports. According to airport signs shared by Fox News' Bill Melugin that are going viral, such people are being referred to as "Non-US Citizens Without Passports." Sarah has been covering the concerns about such people being vetted.

As Sarah also highlighted, Ashley St. Claire also went viral for how her Delta flight from last week included illegal immigrant passengers who were able to fly in the cabin premium section. The airline has been less than forthcoming.