By BRUCE LOWITT
The Federal Aviation Administration has revealed that FBI Director Kash Patel’s impromptu weekend visit to his fiancee in Nashville, which he said required he leave and arrive on time “and not a minute later,” was the cause of the emergency grounding that resulted in the delays or cancellations of more than 15,000 U.S. flights Friday, a four-hour mess expected to take several days to resolve.
“That ‘telecommunications equipment failure during routine maintenance’ business was pure bullshit,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford admitted Saturday during an emergency Congressional hearing. “That’s what White House Chief of Staff Steven Miller told me to say.
“If you’ve ever sat across from Miller and had even a brief conversation you know what I’m saying,” Bedford added. “I don’t want to say he has a penetrating stare but if you’ve ever seen a Dracula film, you know what I’m talking about.”
Patel has wound up in hot water before for mixing official and personal business that included hundreds of thousands of dollars in government-paid flights.
Patel said he flew to Nashville on Friday to join country music singer and conservative commentator Alexis Wilkins in what he called “a political event,” but didn’t elaborate – although he was overheard by an air traffic controller saying “bootie call” to his pilot.
He has used FBI jets for previous personal visits to spend time with Wilkins but insists he is required to use them, including the double bed he has had installed in the rear of the planes “just for, um, long flights,” he said.
The two once flew from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia – a three-hour drive – in an FBI Gulfstream jet (estimated cost $50,000) to attend a Chris Stapleton-George Strait concert, which they viewed from a private stadium suite.
They also once flew to State College, Pa., where Wilkins sang the National Anthem at a wrestling match. And Patel has made at least five other flights to Nashville, where Wilkins lives.
“Hey, I’m important,” he said. “I have to be ready to get off … uh, I mean to take off … whenever I’m called to do my duty.”
In February, Patel traveled to Milan on a $100,000 government-funded jet flight to watch the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic hockey team, a trip that included a beer-drinking-and-spraying locker room celebration.
He insisted the trip to Italy included a meeting involving government security business but complained “the Biondi-Santi Tenuta Greppo Brunello di Montalcino Riserva sucked. I’d have preferred Walmart’s Oak Leaf Chardonnay, or maybe just a Bud Light.”
While Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and American Airlines reported between 500 and 700 canceled flights and hundreds of aggravated, shrieking and weeping customers at their gates, airport restaurants and bars said they did a land-office business and liquor sales went through the roof, leading to, as one bartender said, “record barfing.”
UPS Airlines and FedEx Express also had serious backlogs and bottlenecks at its southern hubs, but as FedEx Corporation CEO and President Raj Subramaniam said, “We didn’t have one complaint. I mean, they’re fucking boxes.”
Because the shutdown Friday was caused by an FAA problem rather than an airline error, the hundreds of thousands of stranded passengers won’t be able to be reimbursed by the airlines for the millions of dollars in hotels, meals, and ground transportation.
“To put that in governmental terms,” FAA chief Bedford said, “they fucked but we good.”
