[clock ticking]
[upbeat music]
CARL AZUZ: A visit to the world's busiest airport
is coming up on today's show.
We'll give you a few minutes to think of where that might be
as we begin in Eastern Europe.
I'm Carl Azuz.
Thank you for watching.
It appears that two different military forces
are flexing their muscles.
The Reuters news agency reports that hundreds of Russian troops
have been staging war games in a Russian territory
between Poland and Lithuania.
Russia apparently didn't give an official reason
for the exercises, but they took place
as NATO forces prepared to conduct drills of their own
in Poland.
The United States is a member of and the largest
contributor to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
It's an alliance of North American
and European countries.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but the alliance
has been supporting Ukraine since Russia invaded
the country in late February.
That support has come in the form of food supplies,
medical supplies, and many different types of weapons
to help Ukraine in its fight.
But there's a limit to what NATO has been willing to do.
It won't provide Ukraine with additional fighter jets,
for instance, because Russia has said
that would be an escalation that would
directly involve other countries in the conflict.
NATO doesn't want the war in Ukraine spreading
outside that country's borders.
Because Ukraine is not a NATO member,
the alliance is not required to defend it.
But if Russia were to attack a NATO country,
it would be in a war with the whole alliance.
That's why NATO's military drills are designed to serve
as a warning to Russia.
[explosions]
KYUNG LAH: No words needed.
This is the NATO message to Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
This is the first look at American troops firing
weaponry on the ground in Poland since the war in Ukraine began.
[gunshots]
US and Polish forces publicly showed off
the might of the West in a bilateral live fire
training exercise.
One by one, Polish tanks lined up heavy artillery.
[gunshots]
And paratroopers dangled from helicopters, landing
on a battleground that is designed to prepare for a war
just a short drive away.
The 82nd Airborne infantry brigade combat team,
based at Fort Bragg, has been drilling with American Black
Hawks here in Poland for weeks, deployed in mid-February
before Russia invaded Ukraine.
What we understand is that there are two platoons
here, about 60 American troops taking
part in this live fire act.
It's a show of force.
We're about just two hours away from the Ukrainian border.
The Americans trying to show that they are, indeed,
working with the Polish troops.
This is just a small snapshot of the greater US force here.
A US official says approximately 11,000 US troops are
deployed in this NATO country.
They're a visible sign of a larger
military ramp-up near Ukraine.
A senior US official tells CNN 8 eight to 10 aircraft a day land
at airfields near Ukraine with weapons and security assistance
material that is moved into the war-torn country
by truck convoy.
[helicopter blades whirring]
This bilateral drill ends with a photo op for the cameras,
the two countries side by side.
[cheering]
What is the message you're sending to Russia?
CARL AZUZ: 10-second trivia.
Where would you find the world's oldest airport?
Maryland, USA; North Carolina, USA; Paris, France;
or Hamburg, Germany.
[beeping]
Flights began at Maryland's College Park Airport in 1909,
when Wilbur Wright trained two military pilots.
And 550 miles southwest of College Park
is where you'll find Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta
International Airport, which is, once again,
the busiest airport on Earth, according to an airport
trade association.
We said once again because in 2020, China's Guangzhou Baiyun
International Airport took the top spot away from Atlanta
as the COVID pandemic set in.
Guangzhou saw almost 43.8 million passengers in 2020.
Atlanta saw just under 43 million.
In 2021, whose numbers were just released by Airports Council
International, Atlanta saw 75.7 million passengers, far more
than any other airport.
It was a big jump from 2020, but still 32% lower than travel
was in 2019, before the pandemic.
An executive with Airports Council International
says restrictions like vaccine and quarantine requirements
actually did more harm than good to air
transportation and tourism.
Worldwide, air travel last year was more than 50%
lower than it was before COVID.
■
BRIAN WILANTE: When you push back off the gate,
you're going to be talking to an air traffic controller
from the minute you start taxiing to the runway
till you get to your final destination.
We have five parallel runways, and I was working
departures off of runway 2A.
[inaudible]
I'm talking directly to the pilot in the cockpit.
And I'm issuing lineup and wait procedures, which means
he'll line up on the runway.
And I'm issuing takeoff clearances.
[inaudible]
We run 2,700 airplanes a day.
Volume breeds complexity here in Atlanta.
There's so many aircraft calling for taxi instructions,
so many aircraft returning from the landing
runways trying to get to the gates.
If you're asking an air traffic controller
what their beverage of choice is, it's probably coffee.
You've got to stay alert, and you've
got to be focused at all times.
Because of the volume that we have here,
we run probably about five or six emergencies a shift.
When these aircraft come into the airspace,
we get them into the airport as quickly as possible.
You probably wouldn't even notice it.
It's just another day at work.
And the guys-- they're professionals.
We just keep moving them.
But we all don't work in air traffic control towers.
Once they get into the terminal environment,
where they have to start descending and getting
into the airport to land, they come into what's
like a bottleneck, and they have to be sequenced to the airport.
And that's what the radar approach controller does.
[music playing]
MIKE RYAN: Everybody controls chunks of airspace.
A plane flies through airspace.
He's being handed off from one controller
to another controller.
The center is the freeways in the sky,
and we're the off ramps.
The tower is the parking garage.
So we take them off the off ramp and line them up
so they can go into the parking garage smoothly.
In layman's terms, it's taking them from fast and high
and getting them low and slow and getting them a lot closer
before they get into the tower.
You know, it's not the movies.
You don't walk in the first day, and they plug you in,
and you go to work.
There's a lot of map study and memorization work involved.
Everything on that radar screen means something.
MIKE RYAN: I really do love doing the job.
I mean, I've been doing it for 22 years.
Those thunderstorms roll through, that room really pulls
together and we make it work.
You go home at the end of the day and go,
man, we worked through some pretty rough weather,
and we still landed all those airplanes.
That's-- we take a lot of pride in that here.
BRIAN WILANTE: I always liked aviation since being a kid.
I used to have a little matchbox airport
that you could fold out.
And it had little diecast airplanes and stuff like that.
It was one of my favorite things I get to play with.
But I get to play with them for real.
But don't misconstrue what I'm saying.
What we do here is extremely important.
The sheer volume of what we do every day
and doing it without a hiccup--
that's job satisfaction enough.
You're never going to be outside of an air
traffic controller's control, per se, in this country.
And they're going to be guiding you home.
[inaudible]
CARL AZUZ: If you want to know what we're planning to cover
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[energetic music]
If you've ever wanted to own a pretty large
piece of music history, well, this home's
for sale in Pennsylvania.
It was once rented by the family of Taylor Swift when she was
a kid before they moved to Tennessee
to pursue her music career.
It's a five-bedroom, "three and a half"
bath, Georgian colonial property,
about 3,500 square feet.
It's much older than Swift herself,
having been built in 1929.
But this is said to be the place where she learned
to play guitar and write songs.
And it can be all yours for a million dollars.
Of course, everything has changed since Taylor
called that home mine.
And the highway don't care if she'd look back and say,
we are never, ever getting back together,
or you belong with me.
Is it where she left teardrops on her guitar?
Does it make her think Tim McGraw?
She could probably shake it off.
But if sparks fly, whatever you think pop memorabilia,
maybe you could ride up there on a white horse
and make a fairy tale out of home sweet home.
I'm Carl Azuz.
And today's shout-out.
Takes us to Chouteau, Oklahoma, where
we are thrilled to see the students
of Chouteau High School.
The one place we look for shout-out requests
is on our YouTube channel.
That's youtube.com/cnn10.