-- this is more surprising, it makes us better at detecting lies. humans are not, will we focus consciously on detecting lies, we don't do a good job. if we relax and taking cues, we do a better job. in the same weight that when we meet, we shake hands to show we are not holding a weapon in our right hand, cultures use intoxicants at treaty meetings or business meetings, anything where hostile people need to figure out a way to cooperate as a cognitive disarmament. >> sunday night eight :00 eastern on q&a. you can listen to q&a and all our podcasts on our new c-span now app. >> long time -- longtime reportd shepherdson back with us for a conversation on air travel and what the future may hold. before we get to the ghost of

air travel future, let's talk about air travel present. has it recovered through the depths of the pandemic? what is air travel looking like this holiday season? >> it has made a remarkable recovery, versus 2020. we are about twice the daily throughput per day, roughly 2 million passengers starting last sunday. the tsa anticipates it will be roughly 20 million passengers screamed over this holiday period, through this coming sunday. that is down from 2019, and it was about 26 million passengers. but last friday was the single easiest day since march 2020. travel has come back, especially domestic travel. in many airports, it is near pre-pandemic levels. but international travel, which recently the u.s. government lifted much of the restrictions on, is still not back to where it was before. and of course, with the still

relatively high caseload of covid-19, there are a number of people who are still not traveling, but it is much better than it has been for quite a while. host: what about the airlines themselves? how have they fared financially during the pandemic? guest: initially, not great, as the trouble went down to zero. if you recall, the u.s. congress passed three separate rounds of bailouts for the airlines, totaling $54 billion, that the airlines used to account for much of their payroll costs, up to 70% in some cases. that payroll funding expired on september 30 of this year. so the government was covering much of those costs for close to 18 months. it also offered the airlines $25 billion in low-cost loans. so the u.s. provided significant assistance to the industry. and now, the industry has come

back. the problem the industry faces now, for the most part, is finding enough people. they are looking for more pilots, flight attendant. some airlines offer significant buyouts and early retirements, and the demand has come back faster than some of those airlines had forecast. host: with that effort to ramp up, are airlines ready for the holiday rush? guest: i think the short answer is yes, as long as we don't see a significant weather-related or other problem. there is not a lot of slack in the system. we have seen recent examples, both southwest airlines and american, where a weather incident problem really spirals through the system. as united ceo scott kirby said recently, if you don't have enough extra give in the system, this weather incident can turn into a meltdown pretty fast.

in both those cases with american and southwest recently, you saw well over a thousand flights canceled, and it took several days for that system to shake out. the weather looks good now, knock on wood. it appears it should be a smooth holiday week. but you never know and there is always some unknown that could unravel the system. host: on those weather incidents and those large flight cancellations, there were members on capitol hill pointing fingers at vaccine mandates is a reason that those flights had to be canceled -- that pilots or staff were objecting to them. was that the reality? guest: no, there was no evidence of that. there was a single faa control tower issue down in -- i think it was in jacksonville, florida. it was not tied to a vaccine issue, and the pilots union for southwest was pretty insistent that there is no formal action

taken as a result of that. it's worth noting that the airlines, which are federal contractors, which are covered by the government mandate for vaccines -- that deadline has been pushed back until early january. and the airlines as well have pushback there mandates. so there is no indication that any vaccine issues are going to impact holiday travel. it is worth noting on capitol hill that senator cantwell, who chairs the senate commerce committee, sent letters to both airlines this summer, asking my head they let so many staff go, and why aren't they better prepared for these problems. and she is planning to hold a hearing as early as early december to look into this issue and what the airlines can do to be better prepared. host: david shepherdson, reuters correspondent covering transportation issues, with us until the bottom of the hour, at 9:30 a.m. eastern.

phone numbers for viewers -- (202)-737-2001 if you are in the eastern or central time zones. (202)-737-2002 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones. and air travelers -- if you traveled during the pandemic, (202) 628-0205. we want to hear about your air travel since the pandemic began. again, that number, (202) 628-0205. for viewers who have not gotten on an airplane since the pandemic, what requirements are on them because of the pandemic? guest: for domestic travel, with the exception of hawaii, the only real requirement is wearing a mask. the mask mandate has been extended now through mid-january 2022. that mandate has caused some level of friction on airplanes. the faa has reported a record

number of in-flight incidents, upward of 3000 of those reported by airlines, in part due to a failure of passengers to wear on airplanes. for international travel, it is a lot different. number one, you have to get a covid test before returning to the united states. and for almost all foreign nationals, you need to be vaccinated and show proof of vaccination. if you are an american citizen traveling back to the united states from a foreign country and you have not been vaccinated, you have to get that covid test within one day, where as if you have been vaccinated, you need to have it done within three days. so by and large, going to the airport with domestic flights feels basically the same, as long as you are wear your mask, and hopefully not giving the flight attendants any trouble. host: on "meet the press" this past sunday," transportation secretary pete buttigieg was

asked why there is not a mandate for vaccines for domestic travelers on airplanes. this is what he had to say to chuck todd. [video] sec. buttigieg: we found masks and other protections -- we have employers inside the travel industry and across the country advancing vaccines. that is creating a very safe travel environment for americans. chuck: it sounds like you don't want to implement a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel. i guess, why not, other than you are nervous about doing something that is politically divisive, i guess? if we are trying to get to the end of this pandemic, continuing to have loopholes to avoid a vaccine seems to elongate the pandemic. sec. buttigieg: what we are doing right now is working to make air travel safe. again, it is a little bit of a different picture when you have international travel, because

different countries have different standards, which is why as part of opening our travel for international travelers, something i was delighted to see happen earlier this month, we did include those vaccine requirements. but through the masking and other mitigations, we are very confident in the safety of air travel and travel generally in this country. [and video -- [ end video] host: with the airlines themselves want to see a vaccine mandate for travelers? guest: absolutely not. they did agree to the international mandate in part to get the u.s. government to lift those extraordinary restrictions that prevented travelers from more than 30 countries from coming to the united states -- china, most of europe, ireland, brazil, south africa. for domestic travel, i think there are a lot of concerns. one, just the logistics of doing and an airport, getting people through, how much would it delay people going in and out? and then there is the political

risk to the administration for sure of not letting unvaccinated people fly home for the funeral or get to whatever unforeseen circumstance. so there is no indication that the administration is actively considering a domestic air travel vaccine requirement. certainly, there have been members of congress -- there was a letter written a couple of weeks ago, urging that action. i think as the secretary said, they believe these other mandates, mandating the airlines, other contractors, to get vaccinated is the better strategy, versus requiring passengers to get vaccinated before they get on an airplane. it is worth noting that canada recently did institute that exact same mandate. you cannot get on a train or airplane in canada if you have not been vaccinated. host: we are talking about the state of the airline industry. phone lines are (202)-737-2002

you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, (202)-737-2001 if you are in the eastern are central time zones, and (202)-628-0205 if you have taken a flight in the pandemic. caller: hello, i'm sorry, i'm going to try to bring the conversation back to carbon dioxide. the statistics -- there are 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, about normal this erase is 280 parts per million. i'm wondering how fuel-efficient are airplanes? how much carbon dioxide do they produce? how efficient are they in comparison to trains, cruise

ships, cars, buses? i find that air travel might be something of a luxury at some point if the carbon pollution is too large. host: ralph, thanks for the question. david shepherded? guest: good question. that got a lot of attention in glasgow at the climate summit. of course, the issue with planes right now -- there is some effort to try to make electric, very small airplanes. airplanes are large and heavy machines. we don't have the technology yet , or the battery capacity, to make a 730 seven airplane. they are a large driver of carbon pollution. there is an effort underway by the administration and congress, tax incentives for sustainable aviation fuel that would have a lower carbon footprint than traditional jet fuel. in the short term, there are not

a lot of good options, right? to address the climate footprint of airplanes, versus trains and cars that can be electrified -- the real push is, can we change the feedstock make the fuel far less carbon intensive? both airlines and governments have signed up to meet aggressive targets to reduce co2 emissions in airplanes. host: to emily in new york, you are next. caller: the rule that you have to take a covid test three days before returning to the u.s. if you travel internationally, that is a nightmare. i read that the tests have to be videotaped. it is very complicated. and also, if you have a false positive, you cannot come back. you can't go to work for two

weeks. you have to quarantine in a foreign country. i'm not sure why they would make this onerous rule, especially if you are already fully vaccinated. host: what would be more fair? what do you think the rule should be? caller: if you are fully vaccinated, i don't think you should have to take another covid test before returning to the u.s. you put on your mask, you get on the plane, and you return. the covid test has to be through a special company. there are false positives. and then what do you do? you cannot come back and go to work. host: david shepherded him? guest: i don't think there is a requirement that it be videotaped. that may be the case if you brought a home test with you from the united states and are taking it, to prove that you infect take the test. however, you can take a test in a local -- in france, germany, what have you, from a local provider, and present those

results when you go to take your flight. but the caller raises a legitimate point that a false positive or a positive can strand people in a country for a long time. the u.s. does not have a mandatory quarantine upon their return. there are local countries that if you test positive might have to quarantine there. there is no question that the uncertainty surrounding covid tests and getting home is deterring a significant amount of people from traveling internationally. host: an air traveler out of oklahoma -- you are next. caller: thanks for taking my call. my company was completely disrupted during the pandemic. calories were cut. there were furloughs. the only people who were flying at this time were very young people.

it was around this time last year, thanksgiving, they were telling everybody not to fly. with that said, air travel came to such a kind of standstill, the airlines must have been taking heavy losses. you said the federal government was funding salaries for the airlines, and i wanted you to elaborate on that. it is strange. the federal government wasn't funding anything. the american people were funding the airlines. and it feels like the airlines are one of these too big to fail kinds of things. could you explain how much money were we funding to keep the airlines, for whatever reason? national security, obviously, but how much was the funding during an emergency like this? host: matt, you have asked a lot of questions. let me give david shepardson a chance to answer. guest: good question. were three separate rounds of payroll assistance that the taxpayers made to the airlines.

the first -- they totaled $54 billion. the last round began in march of 2020. the last was approved under president biden in the american rescue plan, also i believe in march of this year. this year. that money accounted for roughly 70% of most airlines' payroll costs. the airlines did have to give in exchange -- they did have to give warrants to the government for receiving that, and repay a portion of that funding. but the vast majority of the money, the airlines did not have to pay back. as the caller said, i think the rationale was the system would have to be cut back dramatically, and thousands of pilots and flight attendants

would lose their certification and be not able to return to the airlines when the travel demand resumed, and it potentially could be a huge problem for the u.s. in the recovery from the pandemic. there were certainly critics who argued that the airlines should have not received so much of the funds in grants, and cash bailouts, versus actually having to pay that money back through loans. what some auto companies in the past or banks during tarp had to do with bailouts. but that decision was made in a short period, and that funding got extended, albeit -- if you remember last year at the end of -- before the presidential campaign of november 2020, it did become a bit of an issue. it got delayed in getting spent and ultimately did get extended. host: on twitter -- airlines

received huge bailouts and have not rehired the help they laid off. experience pilots are not easy to find, yet they offered retirement packages for them. they are raising prices to compensate for their lack of planning, and now we are paying for bad management. guest: i only take issue with the idea that they laid people off. a condition of the funding was that the airlines could not lay anyone off or cut paperworkers. the commentator is right that they offered hefty incentive packages for people to leave early, and too many took it, i think the airlines would say, themselves. they did not forecast the demand coming back, especially for leisure travel, as fast as it has. they are trying to address this lack of staffing. to that point, members of congress are not happy either. the senate commerce committee is investigating, expecting to hold a hearing on this issue. i do think you are going to hear the airlines called up to the hill to explain why did they let

so many people go when they were getting so much money in government assistance. host: take you back to a city you know well from your time with the detroit news. this is ray in detroit. good morning. ray, you are on with david shepardson. caller: what is the mandate that is going on with the vaccine? it is real hard to get people to get the vaccine when the government is letting millions of illegals crossing the border that are not vaccinated. you cannot go into canada. you cannot leave the united states. you cannot even go into mexico. but they can walk across the border. host: ray, the airline industry is our topic with david shepardson. caller: it is still a mandate. i'm not talking specifically about an airline. i'm talking about people with mandates. host: ray, we are going to have

an open forum segment coming up after david shepardson leaves us this morning, so maybe a topic to discuss then, but we want to give the viewers who want to talk airlines a chance to do so with david shepardson. this is john out of california. good morning. guest: -- caller: good morning. my first flights were in the 1960's, and what a luxurious way to travel. it is hard for conservatives like me to think that maybe we need to get back to more subsidies for airlines. i could cry from socal to nevada on a 737. and today, the only way i could fly would be to have my own plane. the airlines -- it is poor service. there is no question. hardly any other business could survive with 60%, 70%, 80%

customer dissatisfaction. the airlines do it constantly. i don't know exactly what the answer is, but i know back in the day, ronald reagan, my idol, is the one that deregulated it, and it was a mistake. one more thing. john, i have an issue with you. you gave a man who wanted to defend biden, and it was not his fault that gas prices were so high, almost seven minutes in a 30 minute segment. what he was saying was that we cannot pump enough oil to supply our gasoline. that is absolutely not true. we did it all through the trump administration. we were the largest producer of oil and gas in the world. i have given over five dollars a gallon for gasoline out here. all of these people that are complaining about three dollars, it is going to get to five and we will be lucky if it does not

go to 10. and you let that man go on six minutes and 52 seconds about how it was not biden's fault. it is entirely his fault, entirely. stop the pipeline. stop the drilling on federal lands. they have made war on the oil companies. analysts say our gasoline costs are going to go to $12 a gallon. what is that going to do to the airline industry? john, you are going to get suspended again if you don't get a little bit more fair with the time you allow for comments and like that. host: i tell you what, john -- it was a conversation about how we ask questions at the washington journal in that first hour, and that is what that viewer and i were talking about a little bit earlier, but appreciate your comments, and want to give david shepardson his time on the original about satisfaction with the airlines, customer satisfaction, and how

they can operate with very low customer satisfaction. guest: i would say an airline ticket is a rapidly depreciating asset. so americans are incredibly price-sensitive. they tend to gravitate toward whatever airline offers the lowest price, and then account for whether it is a direct flight or not. with that said, the airlines now , especially the flight attendants and the pilots on airplanes, are facing a very challenging environment, right? people are not always complying with mask mandates. you have seen a huge number of violent incidents on board airplanes. the faa has public service messages and a zero-tolerance policy because of so many awful incidents. i think it is a very difficult time to be working on board an airplane today. so yes, everybody has a story

where they think they were not treated well by an airline, or they were charged a fee they did not like, or their plane was delayed or canceled. certainly, that is all part of the airlines, and the airlines have had in the past acknowledged issues with customer service. i do think one of the reasons it gets so much attention is because people are incredibly interested in air travel. there are cell phone cameras that take video of numerous problems on board, and they get amplified to the media. so not to defend the airlines for many of the less than ideal customer service decisions they make, but i do think the airline issues get more attention perhaps than other industries do. host: the frontier state, this

is mike in fairbanks. caller: good morning, john, and what's left of america. this entire scamdemic is a massive conspiracy against trump and his supporters, and now oann is reporting that the military has used -- host: do you want to take us to the airline industry? caller: this mask mandate, i flew the whole time, back and forth from alaska. i have never worried about catching covid. i have been in states where they don't wear masks. they are doing just fine. montana is doing fine. alaska is doing fine. when you go to las vegas, where i just came from, there are people walking the streets by themselves, wearing masks. it is ludicrous. you have a representative from reuters on to try to explain away the negative effects of the scamdemic.

host: i take your point, mike. do you want to talk about the safety of air travel? guest: i think the caller obviously is very opposed to the mask mandates. i think the caller signifies there is a significant minority in the population that strongly opposes the mask mandates, and in certain cases, that has led to these confrontations aboard airplanes. the airline industry has spent a lot of time. the commission various studies -- they commissioned various studies to show that air wings have hepa filters, and they feel very confident in the safety of air travel, especially when these studies show that people are wearing masks on board airplanes. i think especially for international travel, given that almost all other countries are mandating masks, at least for now. it would be difficult for the

united states to lift the mask requirement for international travel. also, i think there is a certain percentage of people on airplanes would feel uncomfortable being on airplanes without people in masks. you are sitting very close to people, and don't forget there are a certain number of people on board airplanes who cannot be vaccinated, children under the age of five, immunocompromised people who cannot be vaccinated. the mask does provide a significant level of protection, if you listen to the health experts, from catching covid 19 in confined spaces like airplanes. the airlines would argue that it is no different than being in a restaurant or being in a grocery store. but again, airplanes get an outside level -- outsized level of attention because people have anxiety about the airplanes and they have less control perceived -- they are not the ones flying

the airplane. i do think it is still unlikely that the u.s. government is going to lift that mask mandate anytime soon. host: time for one or two more phone calls with david shepardson. thank you for waiting. go ahead. caller: i have an issue with getting a refund for my ticket from southwest. in 2019, i traveled -- sorry, i canceled my ticket, and it was extended to may of 2020. of course, i wanted to travel for easter, but because the borders were closed, the airlines were closing them, i called the airline several times to get a refund of my ticket, or a credit, and they refused to do that. how expensive is this problem? if the government refunds them or gives them bailouts, they should give bailouts back to their customers. guest: great question.

the transportation department undersecretary buttigieg has -- under secretary buttigieg has taken a large interest in refunds. just this week, the government settled a case involving air canada for 4.5 million dollars, including a $2 million fine, over government allocations that air canada had delayed thousands of refunds for u.s.-bound and departing flights. and the government has active investigations ongoing into numerous other airlines over delayed airline refunds during the pandemic. so my advice to you would be, if you have not gotten satisfaction from the airline, i would send their customer service people another letter, and then you can file a complaint with the u.s. department of transportation. those complaints do get reviewed. someone is going to read that. that might be one way to try to get a refund, if the airline did act improperly in denying them.

host: last call. this is pete out of pennsylvania. caller: i understand we are talking about the government deciding whether people that travel into this country or out of it should have a vaccination against this pandemic virus. my question is, i understand that people in airplanes are very close to each other, and also we are trying to prevent this virus from becoming more prevalent. if people have the virus and get off the airplane and give it to other people, my question is, why, as we are trying to prevent this pandemic from spreading, why don't we require all people that come into this country to show evidence of vaccination, like the people coming across the southern border, the rio grande, and any other way?

guest: remember, the u.s. government did, on november 8, we open the mexican and canadian borders to tourist travel. if you are in mexico or canada and you are a tourist, you do have to be vaccinated to cross the land border. you did not have to before november 8, and we had this strange system where if you flew to the united states from -- we had a different system, pre-vaccine requirements. if you flew to the united states, you had to have a covid test, if you flew from mexico city. but as an american citizen, you did not have to have the same covid test to cross the border coming back from mexico. now, the rules have been changed. if you are a tourist coming from mexico or internationally, you

have to have been vaccinated against covid-19. you have to be able to show proof of that when you cross land borders. you don't have to show proof of a recent covid test crossing the border, the land borders. but you still have to do that flying from mexico and canada. host: david shepardson covers all ♪ >> c-span's washington journal. everyday we are taking your calls live on the air on the news of the day and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday morning, hudson institute senior fellow melanie kirkpatrick will be on to talk about her book thanksgiving. then, columbia university's author of the way out, how to overcome toxic polarization

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