Staffing shortages at US airports are anticipated to cause further disruption to air travelers on Wednesday as effects from the US government shutdown, now in its seventh day, ripple out across the country.
Union leaders for air traffic controllers and airport security screeners have warned the situation is likely to get worse, as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported staffing issues at airports in Nashville, Boston, Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia, as well at its air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The airline regulator has slowed takeoffs at several airports this week as air traffic control facilities struggle to maintain staffing amid the federal government shutdown.
Travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt told the Associated Press that the risk of wider impacts to the US aviation system “is growing by the day” and that the longer the shutdown goes on, the more likely it is to affect holiday travel plans in November.
“I’m gravely concerned that if the government remains shut down then, that it could disrupt, and possibly ruin, millions of Americans’ Thanksgiving holidays,” Harteveldt said in a statement.
Union leaders within the American Federation of Government Employees met Wednesday to urge lawmakers in Congress to reach a bipartisan deal to reopen the federal government and discuss its impact on the transportation sector.
“We count on federal workers everyday to do our jobs. Hundreds of thousands of aviation workers, federal and private sector, ask all day long, ‘Is it safe?’ We do that so the American public can take safety and security for granted,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA).
TSA officers and air traffic controllers are coming to work “understaffed and under-resourced by the government in any increasingly unsafe scenario,” Nelson said. “In safety we know that the first rule is to remove all distractions. But what could be more of a distraction than not getting a paycheck?”
Staffing shortages, including an elevated number of workers calling in sick at airports across the US, on Monday affected major airports around New York, Los Angeles and Denver on Monday, delaying over 6,000 flights across the US.
In Los Angeles, air traffic control at Burbank airport was closed and air traffic was handled by another facility. The Nashville airport was experiencing delays of around two hours because of staffing issues, the FAA said on its website on Tuesday. At Chicago’s O’Hare airport delays averaged 41 minutes, and at Dallas-Fort Worth delays were logged at 30 minutes, the FAA said.
About 92% of the more than 23,600 flights departing from US airports as of Tuesday afternoon took off on time, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Despite the delays, the FAA had not issued a “staffing trigger” that would reduce the number of flights in and out of airports, NBC News said.
In a statement on its website, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), the largest union representing air traffic controllers, said it did “not endorse, support, or condone any federal employees participating in or endorsing a coordinated activity that negatively affects the capacity” of the National Airspace System.
The union said “air traffic controllers and other aviation safety professionals take their responsibility to protect the safety of the flying public very seriously. Participating in a job action could result in removal from federal service. It is not only illegal, but it also undermines NATCA’s credibility and severely weakens our ability to effectively advocate for you and your families.”
The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, warned Tuesday that the country’s air traffic control system is being harmed by the government shutdown.
During a visit to Newark Liberty airport in New Jersey, Duffy said the shutdown has increased stress on controllers, who are already working with outdated equipment, and he blamed Democrats for the situation.
“They’re not just now thinking about the airspace,” Duffy said of air traffic controllers, who are not paid during a shutdown. “They’re thinking about, ‘Am I going to get a paycheck?”
That comes as Donald Trump has signaled that some furloughed federal workers may not, as is customary, receive back pay when the government reopens.
“There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way,” Trump said during an event at the White House. He added that said back pay “depends on who we’re talking about”.
According to the FAA’s shutdown contingency planning, a quarter of the workforce, or more than 11,000 FAA employees, were furloughed when the shutdown began last week. But 13,000 air traffic controllers continue working, with hiring and training also ongoing.
“They’re not wealthy, they don’t have three or four or five months of cash sitting in their bank accounts,” Duffy said. “Like many of us, they go from one paycheck to the next, and they rely on that to pay the bills.”
Nick Daniels, president of the NATCA, said the shutdown highlighted issues that air traffic controllers were already facing, including staff shortages and outdated equipment. The situation, he said, was particularly grave at smaller airports.
“It’s not like we have other controllers that can suddenly come to that facility and staff them. There’s not enough people there,” Daniels told AP.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
