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Duffy Holds a Press Conference Ahead of the Busy Holiday Travel Season, Nov. 24, 2025

November 24, 2025 · US Department of Transportation · 0:25:53

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy held a press conference ahead of the busy holiday season, in the Department of Transportation’s November 24, 2025 upload. Duffy anticipated 73 million Americans traveling by car over Thanksgiving, with the busiest road travel on the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday afternoons; rental car prices down 15 percent; 1.2 million passengers by rail; and the busiest Thanksgiving air travel on record — 31 million passengers flying that week, with 52,000 flights on the following day alone — as he stated the figures. He noted weather in the forecast for Seattle, the Midwest, and the Great Lakes and urged air travelers to stay in touch with their airlines, as he advised them.

Speaking from Newark, he recounted the spring outages there — two 30-second outages and a radar reboot that left the facility without radar for a minute and a half, as he stated it — and said the problem had been remedied quickly with the service providers’ CEOs, leaving the New York airports the most on-time in their airspace, as he stated the result. He also announced that air traffic controllers and technicians who had not missed a day during the 44-day government shutdown would receive $10,000 bonuses, as the President had directed, and that capacity had been reduced during the shutdown’s final weeks on safety grounds, as he described the decision. He closed the funding case for the new air traffic control system: $12.5 billion secured in the One Big Beautiful Bill, with another $19 to $20 billion needed from Congress to complete the build, as he stated the figures.

Why it matters

The pre-Thanksgiving press conference is the department’s annual readiness test stated in public: the travel volumes, the shutdown’s staffing aftermath, and the Newark recovery all in one briefing, three weeks before the Christmas peak. The $10,000 shutdown bonuses and the $19–20 billion completion ask are the two dated commitments the briefing puts on the record.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidates: the $10,000 bonuses for controllers and technicians who worked through the shutdown without missing a day, and the $19–20 billion completion request for the new air traffic control system, both as stated November 24, 2025. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation, “U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Holds Press Conference Ahead of Busy Holiday Season” (official upload, embedded above). Remarks and figures as delivered by Secretary Duffy at the press conference.