Aviation Tragedy, Southwest Airlines CEO, "Mag 7" Earnings Reaction, The View from OpenAI 1/30/25

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David Faber (0:59)

Market insight and analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Carl Quintanilla (1:05)

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber, Sara Eisen, and post-9 to the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer has the morning off. Futures are mixed as the market responds to the Fed meeting, fourth quarter GDP numbers, and our first batch of mega cap tech earnings. But we are going to begin with last night's tragic collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter. A search and recovery mission is now underway in the waters of the Potomac. Our Eamon Javers is at Reagan National Airport with the latest. Eamon, good morning.

Eamon Javers (1:35)

Good morning, Carl. It is a heartbreaking morning here at Reagan National Airport. Authorities just within the past hour or so giving us some updated details about what we know about last night's horrific crash involving a commercial jetliner and an Army Blackhawk helicopter just south of this airport. What we know right now is that there are no survivors in this incident and that means that as many as 67 people are dead. 64 people were on board the airplane, three people on board the helicopter. 27 bodies, they say, have now been recovered from the airplane wreckage. One recovered from the helicopter. The Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, who was sworn in just a couple of hours before this incident, said that despite last night's tragedy, air travel in the United States is still safe. Here's what he said.

Sean Duffy (2:28)

Safety is our expectation. Everyone who flies in American skies expects that we fly safely. That didn't happen last night. And I know that President Trump, his administration, the FAA, the DOT, we will not rest until we have answers for the families and for the flying public. You should be assured that when you fly, you're safe.

Eamon Javers (2:53)

And Carl, there have been a number of incidents over the past couple of years involving near misses here at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Take a look at some of the recent incidents that we spotted just over the past year or so. There have been this repeated concern that maybe there would be an incident here. On May 30th of 2024, an American Airlines plane was forced to abort a takeoff. On April 18th of 2024, a Southwest flight and a jet blue flight came very close to one another. And on March 7th, 2023, an American Eagle and a United Airlines flight all came close to each other here at Reagan National Airport. So this safety concern has been percolating for a long time. None of those incidents, though, involved an Army Blackhawk helicopter, as last night's incident did. And I can tell you that as just somebody who flies out of this airport all the time, Carl, and drives up and down the George Washington Parkway, which is adjacent to it, you see Blackhawks, you know, three, 400 feet off the water flying up and down the Potomac all day and all night long here. A very common sight for the civilian and military aircraft to share this airspace. So, the fact that something happened last night indicates something dramatic went wrong with the normal systems which operate day in and day out here. And we'll find out a little bit more about what that is as the days and hours go on. We do expect a briefing now from the Pentagon. The new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is expected to brief later today. So we'll bring you that detail as soon as we have it, guys. Back over to you.

Sara Eisen (4:26)

I feel like that there's going to be a lot of eyes on that, Eamon. I mean, President Trump, for his part, weighed in on True Social, asking a question about the fact that he wrote the helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time, which raises a lot of questions. Anything else from the White House?