The FAA will reduce flights 10% at 40 of the top airports in the country starting Friday morning because of air traffic control staffing shortages that have resulted from the government shutdown.
- Air traffic controller pay is deferred
- So many aren’t coming to work
- And that’s led to significant delays – at different airports each day (and in some cases there have been airports without dedicated controllers on duty).
The controller shortage is real: 20–40% of controllers have no‑showed at some large facilities this week. But it’s not yet clear what a 10% reduction in flights looks like – how that will spread across airline schedules, and how much that’ll be shared by private and general aviation.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy are meeting today with airlines to sort out how to implement this reduction.
From a safety standpoint, I’m not sure that such a broad-based reduction in flights is necessary to address specific airport shortages, and at airports where staffing shortages are most acute on a given day it’s also probably not enough. They’re demanding flight cuts at airports that will be fully staffed, as well as ones that aren’t.
And reducing the workload on fully staffed airports does nothing to help out at airports that aren’t, because the FAA has spent years blocking the use of remote towers that are used worldwide, even though they’d help solve the controller shortage (and at a fraction of the cost).
Norway’s Bodø Remote Tower Centre
What a network-wide reduction does help with is bottlenecks at TRACONs and 21 Air Route Traffic Control Centers, rather than the specific airports that see the cuts.
If a shutdown deal is reached, of course, then the reduction doesn’t have to go into effect. As of this writing Polymarket odds suggest a 40% chance the shutdown lasts past mid-month (but a 60% chance that it doesn’t!). In the meantime, airlines are feeding the controllers who aren’t receiving their grocery money.
The Department of Transportation is escalating the crisis. Rhetoric is explicitly tied to the politics of the shutdown. This 10% cut is clearly leverage, even if it’s also addressing a real shortage (and addressing it late, there are things FAA could and should have been doing for 20 years to address shortages that they’ve failed to do). I’d also note that in the last shutdown the air traffic controller union broadly supported privatization – private controllers don’t go without pay when politicians fail to authorize spending or borrowing.
It was controller absences in the Northeast on January 25, 2019 that quickly brought a deal to end that shutdown the same day.
We’ll have to wait for details, but my strong hunch is that we’ll see a planned schedule and flow reduction coordinated with airlines, not a legal slot order applied uniformly at each airport.
The Democrats are really petty.
Holding the country hostage to they can keep the dead and dying Obama care disaster going.
It’s the Republicans fault.
End the democrat shutdown.
As DJT himself has said before:
“A shutdown falls on the President’s lack of leadership. He can’t even control his own party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the president is weak.”
“If you say who gets fired, it always has to be the top. Problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top…”
“The fact is that the President… is not leading and not getting people into a room.”
Republicans control all three branches of government; they are the ones holding the country hostage, just so the ultra-rich can get tax cuts, while the rest of us suffer, starve, and can’t fly. If Republicans want Democrats support for a bi-partisan budget, they should negotiate and compromise with them in good-faith.
I honestly feel for them, it they should have their back pay reduced by this much
No the demons own this. They refuse to vote on the 13 or so CR bills that have been put in front of them.
I feel bad for those who have contracted TDS. Wishing y’all a speedy recovery.
My enemies aren’t in Russia or China. They are in my own country, they call themselves Democrats and “progressives”.
Why do I have a suspicion that the order will go out to close ZLA, ZOA, ZDV and ZAU, being blue states and all? Probably ZNY as well.
@ Walter Barry — For all I care, this can go on for several months if that is what it takes for the Democrats get what they are demanding. Eventually, the party with all the power will have to cave when the economy melts down. Alternatively, they can abolish the Filibuster and stand idly by in a few years when DC finally gains statehood and SCOTUS gains 10 Democratic justices. Elections have consequences.
@Gene
At that point th military should take over. Democrats are the fifth column.
@Walter Barry you are a true patriot. Only a true patriot would support nations who have interfered with our elections, engaged in cyberwarfare against US entities and stole trade secret from US businesses over other Americans who have a different political viewpoint. Calling people who are fighting to ensure millions of Americans have access to food and healthcare enemies says so much about you.
Turning your back on the weak and vulnerable could be one of the most Unamerican and Unchristian things to come out of this administration.
I hope when the day comes that you are old and infirm, having been dumped in a nursing home by the kids you raised with the same values as yours, that society is more compassionate with you than you are being with it.
@Gene & @Parker — Well said. Hold the line.
@Denver Refugee — I’d expect as much because this administration is petty.
@David P — Exactly. T. Devotion Syndrome. He’s not a god or a king.
@Walter Barry — Thank you for at least explicitly admitting that you are indeed a traitor.
Republican President, Republican Senate, Republican Congress, Republican Supreme Count. Republican shutdown.
I stopped being a Patriot a long time ago. I hate this country.
I’m forced to work to the lazy leeches in our society can survive.
Democracy has failed.
@George
Looks like you don’t understand how the senate works.
Not surprising, most lefties don’t.
@Walter Barry — Vile. Absolutely vile, sir.
As writer and political commentator David Frum first said, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
Case in point: Walter Barry.
@Walter Barry — You know far less @George.
Anyone else seen that ‘same sh*t, different hat’ four-panel political cartoon going around? Mhm.