Trump repeats rant about ‘dirty, crowded’ US airports after flying to Texas rally on newly-repaired Trump Force One

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Donald Trump repeated one of his favourite rants about US airports at his latest rally in Texas, after flying to the state on his newly-repaired jumbo jet dubbed “Trump Force One”.

Speaking at a “Save America” rally in Robstown on Saturday night, Mr Trump griped that America’s “once revered airports are a dirty, crowded mess”.

“You sit and wait for hours, then are notified that the plane won’t leave, and they have no idea when they will,” he said. “Ticket prices have tripled, they don’t have the pilots to fly the planes, they don’t have qualified air traffic controls, and they just don’t know what they’re doing.”

The remarks are almost verbatim to those Mr Trump gave at another rally in Michigan earlier this month.

Twitter users were quick to question the last time Mr Trump stepped foot in a US airport, as he exclusively flies private.

He traveled to Texas from Palm Beach on Saturday on his personal Boeing 757, which had been out of commission for years.

The repairs were believed to have been financed by donors, after repeated pleas from the former president to help him get it back in action.

Mr Trump’s complaints about US airports are not without merit, as the country has continued to face a pilot shortage following shutdowns at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic, many airlines responded to the pause in travel by offering employees attractive early retirement or buyout packages, with more pilots than expected taking up the offer.

About 17,000 Delta employees - 20 per cent of the airline’s workforce - accepted buyout packages or early retirement arrangements, the company reported in August 2020.

On top of this, many retirement-age pilots left the industry at a time when the pilot-training pipeline remained restricted.

In mid-September, US consulting firm Oliver Wyman estimated that the industry is facing a deficit of about 8,000 pilots, or 11 per cent of the total workforce, with analysts predicting that the shortfall could reach 30,000 pilots by 2025.

As in Europe, the US’s airports had struggled to cope with the resurgence in travel demand in spring 2022, as many countries eased their travel restrictions and consumer confidence in travel returned.

Recent data from flight-tracking website Flightaware showed that Chicago Midway International Airport had suffered the most airport delays in summer 2022, with 37.7 per cent of total departures delayed.

It was followed by Baltimore/Washington International, which saw 32.5 per cent of flights delayed; and Orlando International Airport, which saw 32.2 per cent.

Meanwhile, New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport saw the most flights cancelled this summer: 6.7 per cent of its total schedule.