Flight disruptions will likely continue even after the government reopens, airlines and aviation regulators warned, as dozens of flights were canceled on Tuesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered airlines to reduce air traffic at 40 of the country’s busiest airports, with cuts still ongoing, reaching 10% of flights by Friday. The agency has been dealing with a persistent shortage of air traffic controllers, who are required to work without pay during the shutdown, which is now the longest in US history, at 42 days and counting.
Over the weekend, the FAA reported staffing shortages at dozens of facilities, prompting the agency to reduce air traffic to ease the pressure on air traffic controllers who showed up for work. On Tuesday, airlines canceled more than 1,200 flights, according to aviation tracking site FlightAware.
The situation appeared to be improving slightly on Tuesday, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, with only a few FAA facilities reporting staffing shortages. But Duffy said air traffic restrictions would remain in place until regulators are convinced that staffing levels have returned to normal.
“We’ll wait for the data we have before lifting the travel restrictions,” Duffy said during a news conference at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. “But that depends on air traffic controllers returning to work.”
Even after these restrictions are lifted, airlines may take several days to resume normal operations.
“It will take time for the situation to normalize,” former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt said in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered.
“The planes are in the wrong cities and so on. They’ll have to sort all that out too. So much of the responsibility will fall on the airlines, who will need to adjust their schedules and get the aircraft and personnel back into the right positions to resume normal flights,” Babbitt said.
A trade association for the aviation industry, Airlines for America, also warned that it will take time for airlines to return to normal.
“Airlines will not be able to immediately resume their full flight capacity right after the government reopens. It will take time, and there will be lingering effects for days,” the group said in a statement.
The FAA argues that flight restrictions are necessary to keep the system safe while fewer air traffic controllers show up for work during the government shutdown. Some of those controllers have taken extra jobs during the shutdown, and many have called in sick.
But for critics of the Trump administration, the measure seems to go beyond safety. Some Democrats argue that the cuts were a political maneuver to increase pressure to end the government shutdown.
Secretary Duffy rejected that accusation on Tuesday, saying the government was responding to real concerns from pilots and growing fears about loss of aircraft separation.
And he warned of potentially even greater disruptions if lawmakers do not vote to end the shutdown.
“You could find airlines that just stop flying,” Duffy said in Chicago. “There could be airlines that say: ‘We’re going to ground our planes, we’re not going to fly anymore.’ That’s the gravity of the situation.”
Source: npr.org by Joel Rose