this committee. >> we are alive now the white house getting set for the white house briefing with john spicer. it should get underwear -- underway soon. the pentagon's correspondent is reporting that the department of defense has confirmed it dropped the gpu 43, quote mother of all at 7 p.m. local today on afghanistan. they said that bomb is explosive isld -- it's explosive yield 11 tons of tnt. 0.3% as powerful as the bomb dropped on hiroshima. it is the most artful non-nuclear bomb ever used. that is reported from others

done inhat bombing was afghanistan. we are expecting to hear answers from john spicer shortly. [inaudible] white house, at this point, not commenting about the bomb strike on the afghanistan. >> where waiting for the briefing of sean speiser to start in the associated press and pentagon says that the u.s. forces in afghanistan dropped the militaries a lot of that's largest non-nuclear bomb.

a pentagon spokesman said it was the first use of the bomb known as the gpu 43 which contain 11 tons of explosive. therefore scalded to it the .assive ordnance air blast bomb it has been nicknamed the mother of all bombs. president trump himself is leaving the white house heading for palm beach florida and the hollow it -- holiday weekend from mar-a-lago. >> if you look at where he is on china and currency manipulation. these are very different things from what worries you. i know you getting to reporters but all theorld, current manipulation is an .xplicit move by the president

it puts some pressure on china to put some pressure on north korea, and especially if you look at what happened on saturday morning. very busy, lots to discuss. if you are working for the --sident, the bottom line is

>> were bringing live coverage of today's white house briefing. could be a couple more minutes. in the meantime, part of today's washington journal. us now is bart jansen with usa today covers transportation for that's newspaper and we're here to talk about airline passenger rights. good morning. >> good morning. >> we saw the video of the united incident over the next few days and now members of congress are incident -- are interested in it. >> yes the top democrats and republicans on the committee along with the ranking top members of the aviation subcommittee have all written to both the united airlines to ask, is this your policy, is this how you handle things, how might you have handled things differently?

and also to the chicago department of aviation which controls the officers who removed to the person from the flight. in addition, house democrats on the reservation committee led by peter defazio of organ and rick another state, asked elaine chao for the results of her investigation to ask is this the way things should work? should there be taken regulatory action in this realm? >> this is saying we recognize the importance of having passengers comply with procedure. i don't know if anything additionally we -- would have been able to mitigate the situation or your rid of it altogether. what you think the comments will be from united? >> first they want to get the response from the airline and everyone involved, because united ceo had said it was a

horrid think incident and that he stood behind the workers and saying he was following policy. moree is saying perhaps training was needed and things should've been done differently. whatshould first establish is united's position on this , -- what kindow of results they get. there was one that propose -- proposed registration -- n.gislatio with this incident in particular, he plans to propose that to the federal aviation ,dministration bill this year and he hopes to have that piece

of legislation in. >> a tweet from united as far as the apology is concerned, bart janssen is joining us to talk about these issues including passenger rights. you can tweet us at c-span wj. can you explain what this concept of bumping is? >> airlines routinely sell more tickets than seats on their planes because of cancellations, changes of plans, they are trying to buy their planes as full as possible. so they occasionally have more passengers show up for a flight than they have seats available. bumpedar, they had passengers the least that they have bumped them since they started to keep track of the statistics in 1995.

nevertheless, they bumped involuntarily. that is the policy where you might hear it in the gate where they say we would like to offer you $400 of the night in a hotel room if you are willing to take a flight the next day. voluntary bumping's last year --aled 400 and 34,000 people 430 4000 people agreed to those terms to take a later flight. bumping's,tary that's when you think you're going to get on the flight and the flight as a result, and you don't ago because you're late, you have to be somewhere. that was the passenger in this case. there was something like 40,000 of them -- those in distance -- .hose incidents that was something like .43 passengers for every 10,000 they carry. , buts a very small portion

if you are the person getting bumped, you would get upset about it. >> as far as the list, what factors go into compiling it? thehey say they chose passengers for bumping randomly based on the passengers board. there were also concerns on not wanting to separate a family so you wouldn't bump on -- bump an adult and leave a child on board. they have not released precisely bumpingir policy for was in how they chose the passengers but i'm sure that is going to be take a look at. >> is that determined at the boarding pass or elsewhere? by a computerted automatically as the flight manifest is collected. it is not chosen at the last minutes, but at the last minute

is when the results are revealed. they start to deal with the passengers to see how many they have to make offers to to get them off of the plane. to get them off the flight, and how many they might have to deny boarding involuntarily to. let's go to our first call, this is john. five. >> high guys, how are you today? >> i really just had a comment on congress sending notes. it seems to me that they need to be looking at the culture as a whole rather than just this one incident. >> what you mean by that? instance, i just got back from texas on the united flight and the plane was dirty. i can guarantee there is no american that was a flying is a good experience. actually, the market forces

theow the airlines, industry says passengers should choose among the different airlines that they fly. there was a call yesterday by delta airlines ceo and bastion as they talk about their first-quarter earnings and he was asked about this and he said well we do not need legislation or regulation in this realm, because this should be one of the factors that passengers used to choose which airline they're going to fly. that is why the transportation department collects these statistics so you can see, hawaiian airlines, delta airlines, have the fewest involuntary bumping. united is in the bump -- middle of the packet fifth. other airlines fair not as well. said wea ceo bastion only bumped one in every 100,000 passengers. he was one fourth as many as united.

another thing that up on to happen -- that ought to happen, you should dispute these issues before the plane was loaded. on sunday, the people were already in their seats and that made people less willing or less comfortable to get off at that point. they thought they were on their way. thes a matter of, how does airline handle it, and how many do they have. say,irline industry would that is something the market should decide. passengers should decide which airline they want based on the dishes and like that. someone off twitter said wasn't this a case that they wanted to get the crew somewhere as cheaply as possible? fly at members routinely no cost to themselves. they routinely commute from city

to city by plane because of the distance involved. yes, in this case, there were four crew members that needed to be relocated from the flight leaving chicago and landing in louisville area i understand the crew members might have it -- might have been headed somewhere beyond the louisville. they were going to be traveling at no cost to themselves because it was important to have them crew -- those crew members relocated so they can serve their next flight the next day. >> harris gerrit from alexandria virginia. >> good morning. you touched on this. market forces regulating the overbooking, but, has there been a push for legislation to not allow the process, because that's most of fraud if you know you are offering and taking money for more seats than you have available. basically, there aren't a lot

--consumer rules governing regulations from the department of transportation on the airlines because in 1978, congress deregulated the industry and said, have added. compete with each other and what that has done, the industry boasts that fares are much lower than the used to be. theoretically, you have more choices, although they have narrowed into specific routes. many of these choices ought to be based on the market. you are right and the department of transportation still has the authority to approve consumer regulations based on unfair and deceptive practices in selling those tickets. one of the regulations they did adopt in recent years was to potentially find airlines, if passengers are left on planes for a long. of time on the tarmac without

being able to get off the plane, because of some unforeseen delay, so if you stay on the , the airline can potentially be fined for that problem. is, my to the department of transportation do anything about overbooking at this time? some of the lawmakers are talking in that direction. at that direction. at the state level, new jersey governor chris christie has noted that united control 70% of the traffic through newark international airport in northern new jersey, and he has urged the department of transportation to adopt a regulation to prevent overbooking. stopst thinks it ought to here he is nervous as things how united might be handling flights in his city. the passenger was outrageous, but states generally

aren't able to pass many of their own laws governing airlines. airline policy tends to be said that the federal level, so it is a member for congress or the department of transportation to regulate. howomeone on twitter says can the airlines not know how many tickets were sold in the age of technology? >> they know how many are sold but they don't know how many people are going to show up on that day, at the exact time, to flight to louisville. they need the flight to a private louisville and potentially go somewhere else later at night. they don't want the late, things moving smoothly, passengers onto the plane, there are checking requirements, security requirements. you might recall very long lines in the summer because of problems in processing passengers through the tsa checkpoints.

business members change plans late before flights because their plans have changed, so there are number of reasons that plans might change so the passengers don't get to flights or decide not to ride on a flight. in order to get closer to the fullest planes, play the average fly somewhere around 86% or 87% full. so seven out of eight seeds are full on average on every plane. you don't tend to see every middle seat empty anymore. .any flights go off full for every flight that is full, you might have two out of every eight. that is not many middle seats for you to squeeze into at the last moment. airlines are trying to get all the feeds fold, and that is part of the debate to prevent overbooking. however, one of the points that the delta ceo had mentioned was that there airlines do not that there are

airlines that don't overbook. some advertise that they don't overbook. even voluntary bumping statistics were higher than delta. they bumped something like .92 for every 10,000. so almost 10 times more. the other way involuntary bumping it happen is because a plane might have a mechanical problem. if you have a large play, and that plane has a mechanical problem, it can't take off you switch to a smaller plane. you get as many passengers as you can and there, you have what is called overbooking -- or described as. then, you need to make other accommodations for those extra hate -- thatd that is tight can have an overbooking that is technically not in oversell. yet you still have to find a way to get passengers to the destination.

>> they give for taking my call. i have a comment for mr. jensen. i'm a frequent flyer with united. last few yearse that united has made every concerted effort to improve customer service. this is surprising to me. is,question for mr. jensen what i had not noticed before was that they were actually the portssengers to once they were on the plane. this was unusual. the way they treated it these passengers, i don't think it is justified at all. i think the press should be talking more about this. they do. i can assure you that usa today has been writing lots of stories about the subject and we will continue to cover what

resolutions are made weather at united changing policy or the transportation adopting new regulations, or if congress decides to debate and force new laws on the airlines. i will be covering that. what i can say in addition about --ted is that they are [indiscernible] >> good afternoon, as you're aware, there is news breaking about afghanistan. around 7 p.m. local time, in afghanistan, last night, the united states military use the gpu 43 weapon in afghanistan. large, powerful, and accurate weapon where we targeted caves of isis fighters that moved around freely. it made them easier to target u.s. military advs