Flight Cancellations Could Rise to 20% if Government Shutdown Continues
Travelers on Friday at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.
Flight cancellations across the U.S. could rise to 15%—or even 20%—if the government shutdown continues, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
“If this shutdown doesn’t end relatively soon, the consequence is that more controllers don’t come to work,” he told Fox News on Friday. “I don’t want to see that.”
While most air-traffic controllers can navigate missing one paycheck, virtually none of them can handle missing two paychecks, Duffy said. That second check is due Tuesday.
So far, the flight cancellations have been slight. New data issued Friday afternoon showed there were 780 canceled flights Friday, with another 25,375 flights scheduled to depart, according to Cirium, an aviation-data provider. That is a reduction of 3%. To put that in perspective, cancellations are nowhere near what was seen for weather events or technology-related disruptions that have occurred at airports in the past couple of years.
The Federal Aviation Administration has said it would start with traffic cuts of 4% at select airports Friday, increasing to 6% of capacity by Nov. 11, 8% by Nov. 13 and 10% by Nov. 14.
For Saturday—typically the least busy flying day of the week—595 flights have been canceled so far, or about 2.75% of flights, Cirium said.
Duffy said Friday that the gradual approach was based on recommendations from the FAA’s safety team.
Randy Babbitt, the FAA’s chief from 2009 to 2011, said carriers may have asked for more time to adjust their flying schedules to the 10% reduction Duffy sought.
“The airlines have a huge scheduling nightmare on their hands,” Babbitt said. “They’ve got some big decisions to make.”
JetBlue executive Steve Olson said that when weather causes a delay, operations crews typically have time to prepare. Staffing-related delays like the ones hitting air-traffic control towers are more unpredictable.
Olson, senior vice president of operations and airports for JetBlue, looked at the FAA’s webpage Friday afternoon and counted off ground delays across the country, including a four-hour average delay at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Flight crews can’t absorb delays that long, he says.
The airline will cancel more flights to make sure they can efficiently run those they keep on the schedule, Olson said. “That’s just how we’re going to have to navigate.”
JetBlue has cut flights with fewer passengers and is running fewer flights on routes with frequent trips—for instance, its New York City to Orlando route. The airline also has to consider where the crew and plane need to be positioned before canceling, he says. On Friday, JetBlue canceled about 25 flights.
If the FAA does restrict flights by as much as 20%, Olson said, travelers will have far fewer options, especially as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches.
The reductions to air travel have been moderate so far and are nowhere near the disruptions seen for weather events or technology-related disruptions that have occurred in the past couple of years.
Outside the Delta Lounge on Friday in San Francisco International Airport, a line formed as staffers handed out cookies, Pringles, Cheez-Its and water to travelers waiting to enter the bustling lounge. By midday, some travelers’ flights had been delayed multiple times.
Seckeita Lewis
“I don’t want to jinx it,” said Seckeita Lewis, who was flying Friday from San Francisco to Dallas on American Airlines. Her flight looked like it would be on time.
Lewis, chief marketing officer of the nonprofit StoryCorps, was in town for a work gala and eager to get home to her 3-year-old daughter. She said she had been thinking about the risk of delays ever since the potential for flight disruptions was announced.
“Everyone is thinking about ‘what if?’” Lewis said, adding that she briefly considered having to drive home. But the San Francisco airport was less chaotic than she feared, she said.
Nicola Rice, 22, waited in Terminal 1 after his flight from Los Angeles arrived on time, but some friends traveling from other cities got delayed. They planned a weekend filled with activities such as seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and visiting Alcatraz Island.
“I was trying to figure out which would be more likely to be canceled,” he said.
Nicola Rice
The scene at Newark Liberty International was calm Friday afternoon. Leticia Contreras, a 47-year-old from New Jersey, had started to plan for what to do if her flight home from Florida was canceled or delayed, but the plane took off with no issue.
“I had told my mom I might be staying an extra day and pushing back some plans that I had for tomorrow,” Contreras said. “Luckily enough, everything’s gonna be fine.”
Matthew Massia-Lahey and Teresa Forbes weren’t as lucky. The laboratory technologists at a hospital in Burlington, Ontario, spent five days in the U.S. training on a new piece of medical technology. They were initially relieved Friday afternoon that their flight home was only delayed by 35 minutes.
Reached later Friday, Forbes said their flight was delayed twice more due to “air traffic controller delays.” She also worried about colleagues due to arrive next week in the U.S. for their training.
At Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, Kelly O’Brien said the airport was “surprisingly way emptier than I expected.”
The 30-year-old New Yorker said she breezed through security in about three minutes.
“I saw things on TikTok and I said it looks crazy here, but it’s totally fine,” she said.
Rob Davidson, 55, was heading home to Saskatchewan, in Canada, from an expo in New Orleans.
“I was a little paranoid when I heard about the whole thing and looking at the airports listed and, of course, I’m going to one of those airports next,” he said of his Atlanta stop where he would connect to a flight on to Calgary.
“It’s really out of my control, so I’m just gonna roll with it,” he said.
Write to Allison Pohle at [email protected], Sarah Krouse at [email protected], Victoria Albert at [email protected] and Betsy McKay at [email protected]
