I don't call it derailment. I call it disaster. It's Norfolk's disaster, not a train derailment.

It's been more than a month since a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. And despite assurances from authorities that, yes, the air and drinking water are safe, residents like Jim Stewart just aren't sure. He told Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw as much during a CNN town hall last month.

Did you shorten my life now? I want to retire and enjoy it. How are we going to enjoy it? You burden me.

But it's not just East Palestine residents who have questions. Just last week, the NTSB launched a special investigation into the company's safety culture after multiple derailments and at least three deaths since late 2021.

I want to begin today by expressing how deeply sorry I am for the impact this derailment has had on the residents of East Palestine and the surrounding communities.

And Norfolk's CEO was hauled in front of Congress to answer questions from a Senate committee about what his company is doing to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

Will you commit to supporting the bipartisan Railway Safety Act and help restore the public's trust in your company? Go ahead.

Senator. Thank you for that question. We are committed to the legislative intent to make rail safer.

He vowed to enact new safety measures and said more than $28 million would be going to affected communities, which I should say is just a tiny portion of the company's profits. And get this, in rural Alabama, on the very same day his show was delivering his testimony, another Norfolk Southern train ran off the tracks. But trains aren't even the only mode of transportation under the microscope.

Lots to come in this hour. We're going to begin, though, with another yet another disaster at one of America's busiest airports. The FAA is now investigating five near misses between planes. In just two months.

The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration was also on Capitol Hill last week after a string of safety incidents involving planes that hadn't even left the ground. My guest this week is CNN transportation correspondent Pete Muntean. We're going to look at what's happening on our nation's runways and what it says, if anything, about the aviation industry. From CNN, this is one thing. I'm David Rind. It seems like every other day I'm hearing about some scary moment in the air or close call on the runway. What the heck is going on with the airline industry?

There's just been these repeat runway incursions are what they're officially known as. And that's essentially when airplanes coming in to land or take off or taxiing, just get too close to one another or at an airport. Usually these happen in pretty high numbers throughout a year, but never really in a way that we have seen with such frequency involving airliners like we've seen lately. So we've essentially seen six since the start of this year at JFK, Boston, Burbank, Boston, Honolulu, and Sarasota. And that's what's caused a lot of safety alarm, not only by regulators, but also investigators also at the airlines, also by labor groups.

What does this look like when this happens?

You know, there's not a great analogy for it, but it looks like two airplanes in the wrong spot at the wrong time. So all of these incidents sort of differ a little bit. In some cases, an airplane will have to go around, meaning the pilots add the power back in, pull back up and climb away from a runway.

An American Airlines jetliner crossed the runway where a Delta Airlines flight was taking off at New York's JFK Airport.

In some cases, there's an aborted takeoff, which is very dramatic. The pilots rip off the power and slam on the brakes and stop very quickly. That's what we saw at JFK.

It's a 1943 canceled takeoff since of the 1943 canceled takeoff.

Sometimes they've not actually been able to see, so far as we can tell, these other airplanes. So like in the Austin incident, there was this FedEx flight coming in to land while there was a Southwest flight still on the runway.

Southwest confirm on the roll. Rolling now.

And the weather there was very bad. The visibility was poor and the cloud ceiling was low. So they couldn't actually see the airplane maybe until the last moment. FedEx is on the go. So the crew had that had the presence of mind in the FedEx flight to say, we're going around. But in that case, they may have come within only hundreds of feet of one another, which is very, very close when you consider the speed at which these planes are traveling.

Right. And you're a pilot. So can you take us inside the cockpit? Like what would allow these close calls to happen in the way that they have?

This is something that pilots train for essentially almost from their first lesson in an airplane. And they learned a lot of vigilance and respect for the airport environment. Taxiways and runways where they intersect with each other. The complexity goes up sort of as you go in your flying career. So you may go to an airport that has multiple intersecting runways or intersecting taxiways, runways that are parallel to one another, but also parallel with other taxiways that look like the runway. So that can sort of cause some of these issues and cause confusion. So, you know, what does it look like from from the pilot's seat? It essentially looks like that things are amiss, that that things aren't where they should be. We went to Dulles and we did this demo essentially with a flight instructor and an airplane that airline pilots used to train to do a couple of landings and takeoffs and taxi around and just see, you know, how you really have to be vigilant and keep your head on a swivel. And we were on like a beautiful, crystal clear ceiling and visibility unlimited kind of day. And you can see how you just really have to be vigilant. It's teamwork. It's two pilots in the airplane, but it's also air traffic control. Everyone's got to work out. But I think in some of these instances, we've seen just a couple of breakdowns in those those safeguards. And thankfully, there are other safeguards in place that have helped avoid a catastrophe.

And so are we really seeing more of these incidents than normal or are more people just kind of aware of it looking for it?

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the million dollar question, right? Like there is part of me and part of safety experts and advocates who have said, you know, we're just seeing these with more regularity because there are more watchdogs out there. There are more people watching out for this on Twitter and social media. But there's never been really a period of time in recent years where we've seen these incidents with such frequency. Have these just been happening in the background and people have not taken note or the NTSB is not taking note?

Well, we have investigated in the past other runway incursions. We've investigated wrong surface landings.

And so I asked the the head of the NTSB, the chair of the NTSB, Jennifer Homendy, about this.

I just think they haven't made a made it to the surface to in the public eye as much. But I think it's a good thing.

And she said, you know, regardless of the reason of why we're seeing more of these, it's good. You know, they could be happening more. Maybe, maybe not. But if the spotlight is put on these problems, then that could trigger some major safety reforms. And either way, it's good is kind of her point.

In this case. There's a bright light on, hey, we have a serious issue here that we have to look at. And so now hopefully we'll get some concrete action.

Pete, we've been talking about these runway incursions. But, you know, I remember in January, the FAA had to issue a nationwide ground stop because the contractor mistakenly deleted some files related to a pilot safety system. The administration also has not had a permanent leader for over a year. You know, there's been some issues in confirming President Biden's pick. So things seem, you know, not great over there. What is the FAA going to do to level things out?

You know, Billy Nolen, the acting administrator, he has an aviation background. He was an airline pilot. He worked for the airlines for a long time.

Remember what I've said before and what every ministry before me is saying? Safety is always a journey. We are never going to declare victory.

But when he spoke to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and the Senate Commerce Committee and when he was asked about it, asked by reporters afterward, he said, you know, essentially, he said there's just a common theme here. The incidents are the same type, but we don't know if they're the same cause.

Which is why I've asked the industry to come together as a group of stakeholders. And let's ask ourselves exactly that question and say, are there other lessons to be learned? Is there are there dots to be connected in this space? And if so, what might they be? And what concrete actions might you take? If you're an airline, might you take if you're an OEM?

And so this week in this safety summit that the FAA is going to hold, he says we're going to connect the dots if there are dots that connect. And so it seems like this will essentially just be a roundtable where they will try and figure out what the heck is happening, why why do these keep happening with such regularity? And I mean, we're essentially averaging since the start of the year, one every ten days. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, and even in the time in which Billy Nolan, the acting FAA administrator, was on the Hill, he was on the Hill mid-February. He was on the Hill this past week, there have been, you know, three more. So it's happening a lot. And there's a lot of attention on this. So, you know, hopefully it'll triggers and big change here.

So are any of these issues related to staffing in terms of pilots and flight attendants?

How critical is training for pilots right now? The proper training for pilots right now?

The system is is stressed, as I've ever seen it in my 30 plus years working in the airlines. You know.

I talked to the representative of the Allied Pilots Association. His name is Dennis Tager. He's a captain for American. He's been with the airline for 30 years. And he says the system is just under such incredible pressure right now that there's been and I'm paraphrasing here, but a bit of a brain drain at the airlines that a lot of the retired folks, a lot of the experienced folks retired were even in some cases incentivized to retire by the airlines because of the downturn in the pandemic and their new pilots sort of matriculating up.

We have a huge wave of new pilots coming in, training on new aircraft, moving in seats. We have management teams that are trying to increase the training pipeline by reducing training not only in quantity but in frequency.

And there's a lot of corporate pressure, he says, to perform that the airlines are were sort of flat footed by the huge uptick in travel that they did not anticipate happening as fast as it did as pandemic restrictions relaxed.

But when you're pushing pilots, we're human beings and then you're not training the way you used to.

The pilots say in some cases, the corporations, the airlines, which are huge companies, are at fault here, too, because there's just a lot of pressure to get from point A to point B and get into these airports and land and taxi and get to the gate and get people off and get people back on and going routes as possible.

You've got to keep them coming.

Yeah, right. It's a business.

Are you worried that corporate influence will have too much influence over regulators?

We have record revenue right now that requires record responsibility, not responsibility, to lobby Congress to ensure that you can get by with just enough, but to ensure that the safety margin is not only protected, but broadened because of all of these new folks coming in.

You know, I think that will be one of the subjects that comes up in the safety summit, because the pilots would like to say organized labor would like to say, you know, the airlines, in a way, the corporate entities of the airlines are in a way complicit in this. You know, it kind of begs pointing out that aviation, commercial aviation in the U.S. is like incredibly safe. And there's not been a fatality on a commercial airliner since 2018. That was kind of a freak accident. There's not been a major crash of a commercial airliner since 2009. And so aviation has gotten so safe that now we're reporting on incidents that did not happen, that they were close. Cause they weren't actually crashes where people were hurt or killed. These were things where in many cases there were some failures in the system, the layers that keep airplanes from having these runway incursions. But ultimately, the system worked and it didn't happen.

Well, Pete Muntean glad to grab you in one of the rare times you're not at an airport. Thanks so much.

Thanks for having me.

One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me. David Rind. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Faiz Jamil is our senior producer. Greg Peppers is our supervising producer. And Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Special thanks this week to Ross Levitt and Greg Wallace. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next Sunday. Talk to you then.