It takes a traveler to know journey.

Pete Buttigieg is arguably the most distinguished Secretary of Transportation to serve since the cupboard place was created in the Sixties.

Some of that is simply good politicking.

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Americans have develop into more and more annoyed with airways and air journey. Since taking workplace, Buttigieg has been seen at the forefront of varied Biden administration initiatives and has pushed for passenger rights, limits on “junk fees” and higher operational efficiency amongst the airways, whereas working via a decadeslong air visitors controller scarcity that is reached a vital stage. Holding the airways to account is a straightforward populist win.

But one other a part of it is that Buttigieg is a frequent flyer for work and an total journey buff and AvGeek.

“Air travel is a miracle,” Buttigieg instructed TPG throughout an interview Thursday following a press convention at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT). “The fact that I’m reading memos in a seat in the sky as part of how I start my Monday morning.”

“There’s a magic to that, even 100 years into the aviation age, that I hope we never lose track of,” he added.

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It’s an energizing perspective for somebody who travels for work at the very least as soon as a week, nearly completely on no matter flight he can seize (like most high-ranking officers, Buttigieg has often flown on authorities plane when business choices weren’t viable for varied causes).

And whereas these journeys are all for a goal — for conferences with stakeholders, occasions, for the likelihood to see the real-world impression of varied insurance policies — the flights themselves, and the likelihood to go to varied elements of the air journey system firsthand, are helpful to him as the business’s chief regulator, he mentioned.

“You see patterns,” he mentioned. “It’s one thing to see one air traffic control tower; it’s another thing to be in 10 of them.”

But for Buttigieg, journey has all the time been about greater than the infrastructure and logistics, he mentioned.

As have points and miles.

Buttigieg’s father immigrated to the U.S. from Malta whereas pursuing his doctorate diploma. He typically flew to Italy in the course of his analysis, Buttigieg mentioned, which meant accumulating a first rate stash of miles over the years.

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“He would save up those miles and points and every couple of years, it meant we could go to Malta to see my family,” he mentioned. In the traditional custom of award journey, typically that might imply taking a wild routing to attain seats at a decrease tier on the award chart — like flying from South Bend, Indiana, to Chicago to London to Rome earlier than lastly flying on to Malta.

“It took two or three days, but it meant that I got to see my grandmother and all my aunts and uncles and cousins, and as a kid, it was just such magic,” Buttigieg mentioned, remembering that his father used to maintain a log of each single flight he’d taken — one thing many journey aficionados nonetheless do at present, with digital providers like Flightradar24’s flight log or the Flighty app.

Recalling these journeys to see prolonged household, and the means that saving miles for a few years was a viable technique, Buttigieg alluded to the Department of Transportation’s open investigation into frequent flyer packages and allegations of deceptive habits on the a part of airways.

“I’m concerned about some of the arbitrary devaluations of points, or these fees that get attached to everything,” he mentioned.

Buttigieg, in the meantime, collects loads of miles throughout his work journey, similar to another passenger, although he mentioned he pays much less consideration to his standing — he prefers to say no upgrades to keep away from any false look of impropriety.

“I don’t want to be photographed in first class,” he mentioned.

He tends to make use of miles nowadays for a number of journeys, each time it makes the most sense, somewhat than saving all of them up.

“We’ll figure out whether we’re better off using airline miles, credit card points, or money,” he mentioned.

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Despite any romantic notions of what journey could be, Buttigieg famous that there are inherent challenges and unpleasantries concerned, particularly for individuals who aren’t frequent enterprise vacationers but may fly as soon as each couple of years for the holidays.

“The worst is when you really need to be somewhere and there’s a disruption, right?” he requested. “That’s a constant headache that I think about both as a traveler and as a policymaker.”

“I think everybody gets that weather happens, things happen,” he added. But when there are persistent or ongoing points inside the airline’s management, issues that airways “could and should do differently, that’s when I think we’ve got to lean in.”

For occasion, late final yr, the DOT fined Southwest Airlines a record-breaking $140 million over its operational collapse throughout the 2022 vacation season, which left 2 million Americans stranded all throughout the nation as the airline struggled to regain its footing following a winter storm.

Of course, some delays — like the congested airspace surrounding the Northeast and a lot of Florida — could be linked to the DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration’s scarcity of air visitors controllers. That’s additionally been a precedence for the administration, with Buttigieg telling TPG in January that the hiring of latest controllers had lastly accelerated.

“I’m encouraged by that, but I’m also very concerned because we need to pick up the pace on that hiring to make sure it stays ahead of retirements and departures,” he mentioned at the time.

Aside from the frustrations of coping with delays, Buttigieg mentioned that opaque and unfair fare constructions, notably for much less frequent vacationers, are certainly one of the extra irritating issues he’s noticed via his time in the air and on the floor.

“If you aren’t getting the value you thought you were getting,” he mentioned. “That’s something that can be a consistent headache too.”

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“In any other market, you know what the price of something is and then you make your decision on whose product to buy, and that can be a little fuzzier,” he added.

But nonetheless, to Buttigieg, the frustrations are an apart to the joys of air journey.

“There’s something deeply human about marveling at flight, because it kicks off at such a young age. Our son’s vocabulary had 10 words in it and one of them was ‘airplane.’ Our daughter, too.”

“When they see an airplane, when we’re traveling, when we take them to a museum and we look at airplanes and everything that surrounds them, there’s just a magic to it.”

And from the perspective of a policymaker and regulator, the achievements which have been made in security in air journey are one thing to admire, Buttigieg mentioned, whilst the FAA continues to work to enhance security measures in gentle of a number of current incidents.

“I’m trying to get an area like roadway safety to catch up to that culture,” he mentioned, “because we tolerate a level of heartbreak in roadway crashes that we never would in aviation.”

But on the theme of the day — infrastructure — Buttigieg mentioned that the key focus is on ensuring that the nation’s air journey system is updated and able to serve.

“Every time I come to an airport,” Buttigieg mentioned, “I find myself wondering what people are on their way to.”

“What we know,” he added, “is that no matter what brings you to the airport, so much depends on the airport being ready to meet your needs.”

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