Air Travel Debacles Put Pete Buttigieg in the Hot Seat

The F.A.A. outage, which occurred when a system that sends safety alerts to pilots went down, fell more directly under Mr. Buttigieg’s watch, and it came at a time when the F.A.A. lacks a permanent leader. Mr. Buttigieg quickly took responsibility for the mess, telling reporters, “When there’s a problem with a government system, we’re going to own it, we’re going to find it, and we’re going to fix it.” The F.A.A. said on Thursday that a preliminary review of the incident found that contract personnel had “unintentionally deleted files” while working on the system.
Complaints about air travel long predate Mr. Buttigieg’s time as transportation secretary, and he possesses a limited number of tools to improve the flying experience for the American public. Congress passed legislation in 1978 to deregulate the airline industry, and mergers have left four carriers dominating the domestic market.
In the case of the Southwest catastrophe, the airline struggled to recover from the winter storm after its system for scheduling flight crews became overwhelmed. Its problems were exacerbated by the “point to point” approach it uses for routes, with planes hopscotching from city to city without returning to large hub airports. As transportation secretary, Mr. Buttigieg could exert pressure on Southwest to do right by its customers, but he had no role in the airline’s internal operational troubles.
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The recent disarray in the nation’s air travel system is nonetheless an undesirable turn of events for Mr. Buttigieg, whose image relies heavily on his technocratic wonkiness. A Harvard-educated former McKinsey & Company consultant, he has often boasted about his efforts in South Bend to improve the workings of municipal government, including by harnessing data to inform decision making.
Mr. Buttigieg’s status as an ascendant figure in the Democratic Party has also made him a prime target for Republicans, who eagerly skewered him after the F.A.A. outage grounded flights. “Pete Buttigieg couldn’t organize a one-car funeral,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, wrote on Twitter last week.
In addition to potentially running for president again, Mr. Buttigieg has been speculated about as a possible Senate candidate in Michigan, where Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, announced this month that she would not seek re-election next year. Mr. Buttigieg had previously changed his residency to Michigan, his husband’s home state. He responded to Ms. Stabenow’s announcement by saying, “I am fully focused on serving the president in my role as secretary of transportation, and not seeking any other job.”