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Quest Means Business
Delta CEO: We've Formed Strong Relationships With Our Flyers; Delta Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary; Australia's Age-Restricted Social Media Ban Takes Effect; Trump Heads To Pennsylvania To Sell His Economic Agenda; Running the World's Busiest Airport; How To Manage The Boarding Process At The Airport. Aired 4-4:45p ET
Aired December 09, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:16]
RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS": Closing bell ringing on Wall Street with a bit of a strange sort of session for the Dow
Jones. Mainly Fed, of course, is tomorrow. So there is a lot of nervousness ahead of what's going to be happening. There we are down at the close. Not
hugely, but nice big strong gavel to end trading. Everything has come to an end.
Those are the markets and these are the main stories that were following for you today. Tonight, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines tells me
A.I. is not making your plane tickets more expensive.
Australia has imposed its nationwide ban on social media for children younger than 16. How has the first day gone?
And a day in the life of Atlanta. Atlanta-Hartsfield, the world's busiest airport. The general manager will be joining me later in the program to
tell me what it is like running the busiest airport in the world.
We are tonight live at Atlanta's Airport on Tuesday, it is December the 9th. I am Richard Quest and most certainly, at an airport with airlines, I
mean business.
Good evening.
We will get to the news of the day in just a moment. First of all, though, from the world's international terminal, the busiest international airport.
This is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS tonight at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, a very special edition.
We are here because it is the 100th Anniversary of an aviation institution, Delta Air Lines. Yes. Three words, Delta Air Lines. Don't get that wrong,
and Hartsfield is the airline's headquarters and its largest hub. And we will get to the implications of how that all fits together in just a moment
or three.
It is also home to the Delta Flight Museum and we will have a tour of that, see their old planes and just see some of that wonderful memorabilia.
First, though, Delta's chief executive told me he wants to connect the globe as the airline enters its second century. Ed Bastian said the company
will not use A.I. to set individual pricing. That has been the big fear many conspiracy theorists say it is already happening, but Ed Bastian says
the idea is currently not possible. Instead, Mr. Bastian says Delta is focused on its relationship as it comes to an end of its first century,
with partners and flyers.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED BASTIAN, CEO, DELTA AIR LINES: It is not just your life. You're putting your schedule in our hands, the experience you receive, because when you're
on your planes, you're on our plane and making sure we get you where you need to be in the condition and the shape you want to be in, in terms of
how you're traveling, whether its first class, whether it is basic economy, we take and have a standard of service for all levels of customers at
Delta.
And so as a result of that, you form this relationship and it extends beyond individual, it is family, it is community. Certainly, it is on a
larger part for the globe.
QUEST: But it is a relationship that can be damaged and/or destroyed as many airlines have discovered.
BASTIAN: It is far easier to destroy the relationship than to sustain the relationship, that's right.
QUEST: A hundred years, it is quite an achievement. I mean, you know, we can parse the names and we can say this, that and the other, but at the end
of the day, it is a hundred years since it has been a crop dusting over there.
BASTIAN: You know, if you think about it, we've been going through it all year long. A hundred years isn't that long. I mean, I am getting up there
in age. I am not quite -- you're not up my level yet, but you're working on it.
You think back even 50 years ago what this business was and to what it is today, it has changed dramatically on a global scale, of product, premium
in terms of the volumes of people that we transport. And thinking about all of the turbulence this industry experiences over that timeframe, the ups
and downs to be the first airline in the U.S. to get to a hundred, that's a hell of an achievement.
QUEST: Let's talk on the growth area with international. It is the big growth, but everybody is doing it and you're doing it with a combination of
partnerships, J.V.s. How do you see that growing?
BASTIAN: Well, for us, it is the future. The first hundred years very much for Delta was about connecting the United States and we are ubiquitous
throughout our country, ubiquitous throughout the major markets of the globe.
[16:05:10]
What we need to do next in our second century is to truly connect the globe and I have been using this statistic for some time when you realize only
one in five people in the world have ever stepped foot on an airplane, that tells you where the opportunity is to grow and expand. That's why we are
doing it with partners.
When you take Delta combined with our partners, we are three times the size of just what Delta is, and so that is our focus and we are going to
continue to lean into that heavily for the future.
QUEST: But managing that between where you fly your own metal, where you're going to J.V. it, where you're going to do an equity investment, that --
what's hats your strategy?
BASTIAN: Our strategy at all times with our partners is about how do we grow the pie best, not argue about who gets what size slice. Make certain
that you have a larger pie because you have a larger pie, everybody is going to win.
So it goes back to our earlier conversation about relationships. Relationships also goes to your partners in terms of how you treat them.
QUEST: Right, but you end up with a J.V. with Air France-KLM. You end up with 49 percent of Virgin --
BASTIAN: Which is also a J.V.
QUEST: You end up with an equity investment in WestJet, and you start to end up with a patchwork of different relationships where you are the center
coordinator in a sense.
BASTIAN: The reason we do the equities alongside the J.V.s is because we want to have skin in their game, not just in our game, meaning we want to
go inside those companies, be on the board, be in the ownership structure so that we are taking care of our customers when they're flying on that
metal and making sure we have the best influence we can with them.
QUEST: There is still a belief that your A.I., not you, the industry, is going to somehow use A.I. to individually, dynamically price that they spot
Quest, they know what Quest will pay and they're going to price accordingly.
BASTIAN: I wish we were that good because your prices would be really high. And no, the reality is it is just not possible.
We have a hundred million price points out there for sale at any point in time. The ability to go down to that level of detail, first of all, you
can't build the cost of doing that -- to track you is not what we are interested in. What we want to do with A.I. in pricing is very much how do
we simplify the process to move faster for everybody.
Machines have already -- always run pricing in our business, and they've run it for years. Right now, the machines are running it based on fairly
simple algorithms, kind of matching what is here, matching what is there and trying to keep up.
We want the future to be a world where A.I. has the ability to understand our brand, understand who our customers are, not individually, but in
aggregate are and what they are looking for and how can we make certain we are getting, not just the best pricing, but sometimes the lower price and
sometimes an upper price?
QUEST: How does that work in reality though?
BASTIAN: In reality, is that you've got machines that are running 24/7. Okay, so today, while we say we have machines running pricing, they do it,
but it is under the auspices of managers who watch and manage the machines.
In the future, we want those machines to be pricing many, many more itineraries than they currently do, giving them a lot more authority to be
able to be more flexible and more agile where we see opportunity. But at the same time, we can't keep up with that from a human standpoint.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: Ed Bastian of Delta Air Lines.
Delta now has one of the largest fleets in the world and flies up to 5,000 flights a day. Atlanta-Hartsfield is its busiest hub by far, and it all
marks a sharp change from its founding.
Look back in history: The airline didn't actually fly passengers for several years. Delta Air Lines had a different name, and it started for a
very different purpose.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (voice over): The history of the original Delta Air Lines is colorful.
It was born in Macon, Georgia and called Huff-Daland Dusters, a series of crop dusters that were created to provide an answer to a problem affecting
local farmers, the boll weevil.
ANNOUNCER: In flights measured by the length of a furrow, Delta, was the first company in the world to use airplanes for crop dusting, and as
aviation grew, Delta grew.
QUEST (voice over): Three years on and the name was changed to Delta Air Service. After the Mississippi Delta Region. Yes, that's where the word
Delta comes from.
[16:10:02]
It wasn't long before those planes started ferrying passengers as well. The first route in 1929 carried people from Dallas, Texas to Jackson,
Mississippi with stops in Shreveport and Monroe, Louisiana.
From there, it was onwards and upwards. New routes, new planes and in 1953, Delta went international to the Caribbean and Caracas.
QUEST (on camera): Deregulation in the 1970s allowed Delta to really turn Atlanta into this behemoth, to the point where for years it has been the
world's busiest airport for both passenger numbers and aircraft movements.
For Delta, Atlanta is central to its success.
QUEST (voice over): Along the way, there have been more than a few mergers. Chicago and Southern Airlines, Northeast Airlines, Western Airlines and one
that changed aviation, the merger between Delta and Northwest.
Delta expanded to a global carrier and was a founding member of the Skyteam Alliance, launched with Aero Mexico, Air France and Korean Air. It has gone
further with a wide ranging joint venture with Air France-KLM and SAS.
Of course, there have been trying times as well.
In 1985, the crash that killed 134 passengers and crew and led to many safety lessons for the industry; a bankruptcy in 2005 exited in less than
two years. And along the way, the Delta workforce ballooned to 100,000 people who served more than 200 million passengers last year.
In recent years, under the chief executive, Ed Bastian, the airlines repositioned itself as a premium carrier, targeting affluent passengers who
are willing to pay to turn left instead of right on the plane.
It is a strategy that is paying off. It is an enviable place with which to be, and one that Ed Bastian is determined to hold on to.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: So tonight, you join us at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport. I am actually in the international section, the international terminal outside.
You can see all the aircraft from different airlines that are all parked here ready to go out. You've got Etihad, Air France, Lufthansa and Qatar
and that is just an indication of how competitive the industry is right across the globe.
So Delta is adding new international routes. How do they decide where to fly? As you might imagine, expanding the flight options, determining the
price, that's a really more, if you will, science or art. The dark arts, some would say.
I spoke to Joe Esposito, Delta's Senior Vice President of Network Planning And Revenue. How do you decide where to send the planes?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOE ESPOSITO, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF NETWORK PLANNING AND REVENUE, DELTA AIR LINES: On the international side, really, people are hungry for new
destinations around the world, and so we can look at all the places we don't fly. You think of Malta, Sardinia, Riyadh, these are all new
destinations for Delta.
QUEST: How do you balance between the business traveler and the leisure traveler, particularly premium leisure?
So obviously Hong Kong, a lot of business going on that particular route. Melbourne more leisure and premium leisure.
ESPOSITO: Right. A little bit of mix on Melbourne; Hong Kong, you're right. Top destination to Asia. We are the number one carrier in Los Angeles, so
it makes sense for us to fly Hong Kong, same as Melbourne. Melbourne has got a great mix of business as well as high end leisure.
So those two make a make a great pairing for us in L.A.
QUEST: How important is international?
ESPOSITO: It is extremely important for us. As large as we are in the U.S., our customers, when you think about the loyalty program and where customers
want to go around the world, these are really mandatory products for our customers. They want to experience the world. They want to use their
loyalty and their program to be able to enable that for them.
QUEST: And when you open a route, Seattle to Rome, Boston to Nice, how long do you normally give it? I mean, how many years before you sort of either
decide the asset is better deployed elsewhere?
ESPOSITO: Yes, we will definitely give it some time. We give it a few years. We want to see progression in that. We want to see the customers
embrace it and want to fly it. So we will be able to see, do we have the right mix of business customers on there, as well as high end leisure? So
if we get those right components, we will give it a few years.
QUEST: In total, how many passengers did Delta carry last year?
ESPOSITO: Two hundred million.
QUEST: Two hundred million.
ESPOSITO: Roughly.
QUEST: But each one of these routes, you're talking about the number of passengers that will go. So, for example, we are in the dozens from Seattle
to Barcelona.
[16:15:10]
ESPOSITO: Right.
QUEST: Which are joined by others. So I am trying to understand the all there -- the difference between the point to point and the hub to hub!
ESPOSITO: Right, the hub to hub is great. We look at Seattle-Barcelona. One, it is a large local market. Plus, we connect everybody in the Pacific
Northwest. So, it makes a great pairing.
But really the more important thing is the Seattle customers for us, our loyal base in Seattle wants that Barcelona destination because it is
valuable to the loyalty program and valuable to how they're investing in Delta long term.
QUEST: How do you decide when you have competing -- because let's say you have two dozen destinations that you're looking at, at any given moment.
ESPOSITO: Yes.
QUEST: How do you decide which one you're going to fire the gun at?
ESPOSITO: Yes, we will go through a very extensive, exhaustive list of what is most valuable, and that is how we've come up with these for next year,
is we probably start with several dozen markets, both domestically and internationally around the world.
How do we want to -- where do we want to go? What's the most valuable? How do we want to do something for each one of our hubs in the U.S.? Because
those are kind of rewarding our loyalty programs. How do we build that?
And so we will go ahead and prioritize those, figure out which ones we can have great returns on, which ones are going to be the most impactful for us
and bring our customers' exciting new destinations.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: Now you know how they decide where to fly, and sometimes they'll tell us how they decide how much we are going to pay.
QUEST MEANS BUSINESS tonight from Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport. When we come back in just a moment, teens across Australia have lost access to
their social media accounts according to the country's ban on under 16, the access to social media effect. It is a world's first and now everybody
wonders what happens next? Who follows?
QUEST MEANS BUSINESS.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
QUEST: To Australia now where those under 16, children and young teens woke up without access to their favorite or least favorite social media
accounts.
Australia is now the world's first country to ban under 16 from access to certain platforms. The new law came into effect at midnight, local time. It
applies to ten of the biggest platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, and needless as you can imagine, there is certain
controversy over it all.
[16:20:09]
Tech companies that fail to follow and uphold the ban face fines of up to $33 million. The legislation has drawn extremely mixed reaction from young
people in Australia.
CNN's Angus Watson reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANGUS WATSON, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER (voice over): Teenagers Noah and Macy are taking their government to court in a fight to stay on social media.
NOAH JONES, PLAINTIFF: Taking away how we communicate to the world, this is how we do it. It is the modern day, it is social media.
WATSON (voice over): From Wednesday, Australia will enforce a world first law banning children under 16 from many of the biggest platforms. Supported
by freedom advocacy group, Macy and Noah's case asserts a right to political communication.
The High Court has agreed to hear it next year.
WATSON (on camera): So what will you lose when social media is taken away from you?
MACY NEYLAND, PLAINTIFF: Well, we will lose connections, but we will lose our democracy. This law is saying that democracy begins at 16, which is
condescending and it is incorrect.
JONES: Listen, there are definitely negatives on social media. I am not denying that, I completely agree. We are saying that getting rid of the
kids is not the solution. We didn't do anything wrong.
WATSON: The government says it has acted to protect children from potentially harmful content, harmful people and addictive algorithms.
JULIE INMAN GRANT, AUSTRALIAN E-SAFETY COMMISSIONER: And there are these powerful, harmful, deceptive design features that even adults are powerless
to fight against, like auto play and endless scroll and Snap strips. So what chance do our children have?
WATSON: Under the new law, young social media users won't be punished for being on age-restricted apps, nor will their parents. Instead, Australia is
requiring tech companies to take reasonable steps to keep under 16s off their platforms and threatening fines in the tens of millions of dollars.
Tech companies say they are already building safer systems. A.I. face detectors will likely be employed to verify age with tools provided by
third party companies like VerifyMy. Users may also be asked to upload their identity documents.
ANDY LULHAM, VERIFYMY, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER: Australia is certainly leading the way when it comes to requiring an age check for every user to
determine that they are over 16 or not.
WATSON (on camera): The governments ban is a catch-all. If you're under the age of 16, you're off social media. But children are all different. They've
engaged with social media differently, and they feel differently about the ban.
WATSON (voice over): The students at All Saints Anglican School on Australia's Gold Coast are learning from cyber safety advocate, Kirra
Pendergast about how to best avoid danger on social media.
KIRRA PENDERGAST, CYBER SAFETY ADVOCATE: Because it is a delay, it is not a flat out ban, they're not banning the internet. We are not trying to boil
the ocean, it is literally just a delay age. And so they've got time to catch up, to become more resilient and think more critically about how they
use apps.
WATSON (voice over): In their final year, Nicholas and Ruby wonder if maybe their school career would have been easier without the distraction of
social media.
RUBY PETTY, ALL SAINTS ANGLICAN SCHOOL CAPTAIN: Nick and I were talking before about how if we could, we would delete Snapchat today, but it is
more the fact that because there is now so much reliability and connection based off one app, you don't want to delete it.
WATSON (voice over): Perhaps for young Australians, the fear of missing out won't be so bad if everyone is forced to miss out together.
Angus Watson, CNN, Sydney, Australia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: Clare Duffy is with me now.
Clare, The arguments are well rehearsed on all sides and you know the extraordinary thing about these arguments is you can agree with everybody
and still not know what to do about it.
Is there any evidence that other countries are looking at following Australia's lead?
CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: There are a number of other countries that are looking at doing something similar here. Denmark, Malaysia, and we
are seeing also states in the United States consider similar proposals, although they're not going as far as Australia is here.
We are seeing a number of state proposals that are putting pretty strict restrictions on teens' use of social media. Nebraska, for example, passed a
law earlier this year that requires social media platforms to check the ages of all of their users and obtain parental consent for new accounts for
minors.
And so we are seeing a number of similar proposals here, and it will be really interesting to watch how this Australia law plays out, how effective
it is at actually keeping teens off of social media platforms. There are a lot of questions about whether teens will find workarounds here, whether
that is using somebody else's face to go about this A.I. age verification or using a VPN to hide their internet process and make it look like they
are accessing these platforms from another country.
And so I think those are the big questions that regulators from other parts of the world will be watching to sort of form their own policies here.
QUEST: So, okay, so what is -- the industry itself is against the ban, but what are they suggesting as a preferred solution?
[16:25:10]
DUFFY: Essentially, the industry is saying we already have protections for teens in place. We have tools like Take A Break Reminders, content
restrictions, parental control tools where parents are put in the driver's seat and able to determine things like their privacy settings and what
kinds of content their teens can view on these platforms and many critics of this Australia law say that it takes too much power away from parents,
that parents should be given the choice about whether their teens are accessing social media.
But then you have parents on the other side of that who are saying, we are exhausted. There are too many platforms to navigate, too many settings to
try to figure out, and the platforms don't necessarily make this easy on parents, although they have taken steps to make it easier in the last year
or two.
But I think there are questions about whether this law could, in fact, help parents take some of the pressure off of them to keep their kids safe
online.
QUEST: Sure. Clare, one to watch. I am grateful. Clare Duffy, thank you.
President Trump is on the road in the Northeast United States with an economic message.
Beginning today, he is in Pennsylvania. These are live pictures of the President as he is going on his way, where the President is focusing on
affordability.
Now, the President has called affordability a hoax. Only last week he used that phrase. This trip is one of many domestic visits The White House is
planning on doing, as the issue is set to be a key factor in the midterm elections, which take place of course, next year.
Polls show a growing number of Americans are unhappy with the economy. Millions are facing -- millions facing financial strain. Yet, Donald Trump
graded himself very highly in an interview with POLITICO.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
POLITICO REPORTER: I wonder what grade you would give --
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A+.
POLITICO REPORTER: A+.
TRUMP: Yes. A++++++.
The word affordability, I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess. Prices were at an all-time high when I came in. Prices are coming down
substantially.
It has been ten months. It is amazing what we've done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
QUEST: Alayna Treene is in Mount Pocono in Pennsylvania, where the President is expected to speak. So let's not worry about A+++++ et cetera
indeed, I mean the state of the economy when he took over. The reality is, whether or not voters now believe he is actually putting things right,
making things worse, or critically indifferent to the plight of the working man and woman.
ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Absolutely. And that's part of why he is actually making this push, Richard.
I mean, the reason that the President is going out on the road to visit all of these different cities, not just here in Pennsylvania, which I should
note, we are actually in a very swingy purple district here in Pennsylvania.
So it is interesting he chose this area, this city to visit today. But when I talked to White House officials, they say they want to do trips like
this, day trips to different cities across America weekly, beginning in the New Year, because they recognize that they need to improve on this issue.
And I'd remind you, during the campaign trail, I mean, I went to a series of events like these when he was running for office for his second term and
the President over and over again vowed to bring in a new era of economic prosperity if he were to win The White House.
And essentially, what we've heard now, if you look at the polls, but also I spent a lot of time today, Richard, just nearby at a grocery store, asking
people, Americans, as they came in and out, how they're feeling about the economy, how they're feeling about the President's policies on the economy.
And by and large, every single one of them said there is an issue that prices are too high, that they're worried about the holidays. Some people
said that they've had to make changes to their living styles, to what they can afford. Some people said they're even moving because of property taxes.
A lot of people are struggling, and so again, this is an issue that The White House recognizes they have, and Republicans at large also recognize
they have at a crucial time when they're looking ahead to the midterm elections next year.
And so the one thing I think that I will be watching for today in the President's speech here, this is the first of many of those domestic trips
he is expected to take, is how he actually approaches this issue, because in the past, he has kind of shrugged off and dismissed, as you heard in
that interview, he gave himself an A+++++. He has also tried to argue --
QUEST: All right, let me jump in here.
TREENE: Yes, please go ahead. What did you say? Yes --
QUEST: Just a minute because --
TREENE: I'm just saying that --
QUEST: The way he continued. Hang on a second, Alayna, I just want to ask you, he continually says affordability is a hoax. The discrepancy between
what ordinary people are feeling at some point, either they go along with him and say things are getting better, or they say he is out of touch.
[16:30:03]
TREENE: No, exactly. And I think that is the issue. I think what I've actually heard from people inside the Trump administration, I've even heard
today, like I said, talking to those Americans here in Pennsylvania is that they want to -- they want the President to recognize what people are
feeling.
What I've heard repeatedly, again, from the Presidents top officials beneath him saying, you know, that they have been advising him, you can't
tell people how to feel. And right now, people are feeling the strain on their wallets when they go to the grocery store, when they go to the gas
station.
And so that is going to be the test, it is whether or not he can deliver the type of message that they think that people need to hear, which is,
look, be patient. This is a message we actually heard J.D. Vance, the Vice President make, be patient. We know it is hard. We are working on it.
That's very different from saying this is a Democratic hoax, or that the economy is better than it has ever been and stronger than it has ever been.
I should also note, Richard, just in some of those conversations I'm having at the White House, a lot of advisers tell me as well that the president
himself believes that this is a perception issue more than anything. A communications issue, essentially.
QUEST: Right.
TREENE: That people aren't talking enough about the good economic policies he's passed. Americans don't necessarily agree if you look at the polls
and, you know, getting out there and talking to them on the ground.
QUEST: Alayna, I'm grateful. You're in the noisy Mount Pocono. I'm here at noisy Atlanta airport. Somehow we managed to hear each other, which is --
which is an achievement of broadcasting delights of all of its own.
Coming up on QUEST MEANS BUSINESS tonight, one of the worst parts of boarding a flight is dealing with gate lice. Those people who crowd the
line before their group has been called. So I've got a lesson in how to manage the boarding process as they say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUEST: Where's the bit where you tell people business and those nice people at the front and the rest of you get to the back?
JACQUELINE HOOKS, GATE AGENT, DELTA AIR LINES: Well, I don't think we quite say it like that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
QUEST: Welcome back at Hartsfield-Jackson -- I'm never quite sure exactly how this thing is pronounced.
[16:35:05]
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta -- the man who's going to put it right for me is the general manager. He'll put me right. Anyway, this is what today's air
traffic looked like. There are well over 2,000 arrivals and departures each day. The airport serves 240 destinations, and a third of them are
international. No other airport in the world handles as many passengers this year on track for 110 million, a milestone first reached 2019. And
with new routes opening up international, it's going to grow even more in the -- in the years ahead.
Ricky Smith is the general manager here at Atlanta -- what is it?
RICKY SMITH, GENERAL MANAGER, HARTSFIELD-JACKSON ATLANTA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: It's the general manager of --
QUEST: No, no, I know your title. The name of the airport.
SMITH: The airport is Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
QUEST: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International.
SMITH: The busiest and most efficient airport in the world.
QUEST: When you say efficient, I keep hearing that on the announcement. Define efficiency.
SMITH: Well, if you're moving 108 million passengers, you need an infrastructure to handle that and an airfield and a number of operations to
handle that many passengers. So we're claiming efficiency because we moved the most people in the world.
QUEST: Right. You're relatively new in post.
SMITH: That's correct.
QUEST: Joined earlier this year. Airports are incredibly complicated. Perhaps only nuclear power stations and hospitals because the necessity of
keeping people separate, security and all these sorts of things. You're also the victim in a sense of forces that you have no control over, from
weather to TSA traffic, security.
SMITH: The economy, I mean, you name it. If there's an environmental factor, it affects airports. It affects how the carriers move across the
country. And so, you're right, airports, I guess you can call us victims.
QUEST: Because you are -- you have to do the best you can and other circumstances can just knock you aside. So here, for example, you have a
very large carrier. You have Delta.
SMITH: Yes.
QUEST: Which is your home carrier. How do you play even Stevens with the other carriers looking out there? Air France, Etihad, Lufthansa, Qatar,
they all sort of say, well, we want to fly there, but --
SMITH: Yes. And they're all important. And, you know, there are requirements that we treat them all fairly. But, you know, when you have a
hub carrier, I think you'll find -- I don't think you'll find a community in this country that wouldn't want to have Delta Airlines as its hub
carrier. And so we have to accommodate them, and we do everything we can to make sure that they grow. They're not just a major airline here. They're
also a very important corporate citizens. And so we try to make sure that we do whatever we can to help them grow.
QUEST: What's the largest, what's the biggest, the most challenging thing running an airport?
SMITH: It's the unpredictability. You know, you're a fool if you think you can look at your calendar and predict what your day is going to be like.
Airports are so unpredictable. But that's also what makes it amazing, right, is that from one day to the next, what's going to happen?
QUEST: But one of the things we do quite a lot of because we cover aviation greatly on QUEST MEANS BUSINESS, is airports are in competition with each
other. Now, of course, not necessarily for local catchment area, but more flights in, more flights out. The whole routes connections business.
SMITH: So airlines have scarce assets and aircraft. And so we compete with other airports to try to attract an airline to commit that scarce plane to
this market. And so we do compete. In some markets, we're actually competing for passengers. Now that's not the case here for Atlanta because,
you know, there aren't any competing airports in the region. But, yes, we compete for passengers and we compete for aircraft.
But we also compete for prestige and reputation, and we want to be the most innovative and a whole bunch of other things.
QUEST: You're the busiest airport in the world by passenger numbers and air traffic movements.
SMITH: That is absolutely true.
QUEST: There's nowhere else to go.
SMITH: Yes, there is. We could be busier than we were last year. Right? So we're going to be 110 this year.
QUEST: You're just greedy.
SMITH: Well, you could call it greedy, but we got a bunch of greedy passengers that want to fly, and we want to accommodate them.
QUEST: Thank you very much for joining us.
SMITH: Thank you.
QUEST: And thank you for letting us interlope into your international terminal. I'm very grateful.
SMITH: It's a pleasure. It's an honor to have you here.
QUEST: Thank you very much.
SMITH: Pleasure.
QUEST: Now, one of the most stressful points of a passenger's journey is the boarding process. Everybody believes they should be in group one,
preferably the first of group one. Everybody wants to get on the plane before anybody else, if only to fill the overhead compartment with their
luggage first. And then you have to deal with the dreaded gate lice. Passengers who gather in front of the gate long before it's their time to
board. It's described in the "Wall Street Journal."
I got a lesson in how to deal with this. Jacqueline was far too polite and firm. I'll tell you. Firm but polite as I tried to learn how to be a gate
agent.
[16:40:03]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: So where's the bit where you tell people don't -- business and those nice people at the front, and the rest of you get to the back?
HOOKS: Well, I don't think we quite say it like that.
QUEST: This is one of the gate area and the boarding process is one of the most fraught and stressful times for you and the passenger. What's the goal
here?
HOOKS: The goal is to get our passengers on board and to their final destination, just as quickly and safely as possible.
QUEST: But that sounds so simple.
HOOKS: It does.
QUEST: It does, but --
HOOKS: It does.
QUEST: It all goes wrong when you've got people, no, I'm first. No, no, I'm boarding group six. No, no. So how do you do it? Show them what you're
saying.
HOOKS: So this is basically a schedule. This tells us that we're going to do this particular announcement in this time frame.
QUEST: "It is my pleasure to welcome you on this flight today." Well, that's nice.
HOOKS: Yes, absolutely.
QUEST: "We are happy to share. We are expecting an on-time departure and we'll begin boarding in."
HOOKS: Right.
QUEST: "This flight will be full today. So to help make your travel easier, we kindly ask customers, and specifically those in seven and eight." Sorry.
You don't laugh when you say that, do you? Here we go. "Zone one. We now welcome zone one to board through the sky priority lane."
HOOKS: Right.
QUEST: What do you do? I used to be sky priority. And I'm entitled to sky. And I should be sky. And I think I must be sky. And I really would like to
board now.
HOOKS: OK, so at this point, if the person has reached this point in the line, not necessarily going to turn them around.
QUEST: You are good.
HOOKS: So at this point, they're already here.
QUEST: You are good. I would be saying back of the line. Here we go.
HOOKS: There you go.
QUEST: We now welcome zone five and zone six.
HOOKS: So at this point, I'm opening this side of the boarding lane. We're keeping this side --
QUEST: For those of you who couldn't afford to pay at the front.
HOOKS: Not quite.
QUEST: How do you say that?
HOOKS: Just a different boarding zone.
QUEST: And then all being well, you haven't offended anybody. You haven't pissed anybody off, and you've managed to get everybody on the plane.
HOOKS: Well done.
QUEST: Well done. And now 20 passengers in the gate who are still waiting for this flight. Too late. Goodbye. You don't do that either.
HOOKS: No, we don't do that.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: You will be delighted you will never see me as a gate agent. I'm clearly not the diplomat.
And that's QUEST MEANS BUSINESS for this evening. What are we? It's Tuesday or Wednesday? Tuesday. That's QUEST MEANS BUSINESS for this Tuesday night.
I'm Richard Quest at Atlanta's airport. Whatever you're up to in the hours ahead, I hope it's profitable. I'll see you back in New York tomorrow.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:46:10]
(CONNECTING AFRICA)
END
