SOTS 2nd Hour: All That Glitters Is Gold, OpenAI Big Tech Playbook, & A Sora-Subject? 10/8/25

Sara Eisen (0:00)

Good Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla. We are live as always from post night of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the morning off. Coming up in today's show is OpenAI's futuristic Sora app, a threat to social media companies and to Hollywood. We'll talk about the growing concerns from competitors and creatives. Plus, gold hits another record high this morning, but not everybody's happy about it. We'll talk about why the surge could be a warning sign for the entire market.

Carl Quintanilla (0:29)

We begin, though, with the government shutdown now in day 8 and some real world impacts being felt as we enter this second week. Phil LeBeau joins us with a look at how the stoppage is impacting flights in particular. Morning, Phil.

Phil LeBeau (0:41)

Hi, Carl. We've seen this happen over the last couple of days and it is continuing today with flight delays around the country. There's no specific pattern. In other words, you don't see one airport in particular that is always hit, though we see some of the usual suspects here. Chicago, O'Hare, has had a number of ground delays. Newark, Denver, Nashville yesterday, and there are more delays due to air traffic control staffing, which by the way, we should point out, the Air Traffic Controller Union put out a note to its members saying, you are expected to come to work.

You're not allowed to say, well, everybody's taking it off. I'm taking it off. But you guys know how this goes. There's clearly air traffic controllers who are not showing up for their job. Now, whether or not they're legitimately sick or if they decide they're too stressed out, whatever the matter is, this has resulted in delays. Look at how they have increased. And we heard from the Secretary of Transportation yesterday on Squawk Box talking about the uptick in sick calls. Monday, there were the delays of more than 6,000. Yesterday, 3655, though there were a couple of hotspots in the day that made it seem like it might have been a little worse. So far today, 861 Keep in mind, we've got weather in the northeast. Boston is a particular hotspot this morning. So what you're seeing here is a number just through, what, 10 o'clock Eastern time. That number is expected to grow throughout the day. We're going to take a look at Delta shares. And the reason we're doing that is because Delta will be reporting its Q3 results tomorrow. We know the company has expected things to improve this summer, especially when it comes to corporate travel. That'll be a primary question when we talk with Ed Bastion exclusively on Thursday morning. But we'll also talk to him about the impact these delays are having in terms of potentially hurting future bookings. Are there people, are there corporate travelers who have said, you know what, until this thing gets resolved, I'm not crazy about the idea of potentially being stuck in an airport for a few extra hours because there are ground delays that have popped up. So those will be front and center when we talk with Ed on Thursday morning. Bottom line is this, guys, you will see more delays throughout the day today as we see air traffic control staffing issues around the country.

Carl Quintanilla (2:51)

Phil, you're absolutely right. Robert Reich did a great substack looking back at the 2018-2019 shutdown and it was really that January of 19 where the flight delays started to hit East Coast, DC area. The flight attendants were like, we told you and that's when things got back to the table.

Phil LeBeau (3:10)

Everybody knows this, Carl. This is not some mystery here. You start to impact the flights of people and they can't get around the country, they start reaching out to their members of Congress and they say get it fixed, get it fixed now. And I'm curious how long this goes. How much worse will it have to be before you really start to see a public clamoring for Washington to come up with some kind of an agreement to get the government functioning again? Because this air traffic controller staffing situation, it was already fragile and it's being made worse by the fact that you do see this uptick in sick calls.

Sara Eisen (3:49)

Are there safety concerns?

Phil LeBeau (3:53)

Well there's not safety concerns from this standpoint, Sara. For example, yesterday O'Hare had a ground stop, a delay stop I should say, not a ground stop. They're doing that so they can spread the aircraft apart further because they don't have the staffing to handle the usual flow of aircraft, takeoffs and landing. So safety is driving how many aircraft they're allowing to go into certain airports depending on the staffing of the air traffic controllers in the tower handling that airport.