Flight disruptions are likely to continue even after the government reopens, airlines and aviation regulators warned, as carriers canceled scores of flights on Tuesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to reduce air traffic at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports, with cuts ramping up to 10% of flights by Friday. The agency has been dealing with persistent staffing shortages of air traffic controllers, who are required to work without pay during the shutdown, which is the longest in U.S. history at 42 days and counting.
This past weekend the FAA reported shortages at dozens of facilities, prompting the agency to slow air traffic to relieve pressure on controllers who did show up. On Tuesday, airlines canceled more than 1,200 flights, according to aviation-tracking site FlightAware.
The situation appeared to be improving somewhat on Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, with only a handful of FAA facilities reporting shortages. But Duffy said air traffic restrictions would remain in place until regulators are satisfied staffing has returned to normal.
“We’re going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel,” Duffy said during a press conference at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. “But it depends on controllers coming back to work.”
Even when those restrictions are lifted, it may take several days for airlines to return to normal operations. “It’s gonna take a bit to unwind,” said former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt in an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered. “The airplanes are in the wrong cities and so forth. They’re going to have to sort all that out as well. So a good deal of the responsibility will be the carriers getting their schedules and the aircraft and personnel back in the right positions to resume normal flying.”
Airlines for America, an industry trade group, also warned that carriers’ reduced schedules cannot immediately bounce back to full capacity right after the government reopens. “It will take time, and there will be residual effects for days,” the group said in a statement.
The FAA maintains the flight restrictions are necessary to keep the system safe while fewer controllers are showing up to work. Some controllers have taken on second jobs during the shutdown, and many have called in sick.
Some Democrats argue the cuts were a political ploy to increase pressure to end the shutdown. Secretary Duffy rejected that charge, saying the administration was responding to real concerns from pilots and mounting worries about increasing loss of separation between aircraft.
Duffy warned of even bigger disruptions ahead if lawmakers do not vote to end the shutdown. “You may find airlines that stop flying, full stop,” he said in Chicago. “You might have airlines that say, we’re going to ground our planes, we’re not going to fly anymore. That’s how serious this is.”
