The U.S. government announced that it would request airlines to cancel flights starting Friday to “reduce the pressure” on air traffic control, which is experiencing a workforce shortage due to the shutdown.
“We are going to reduce flight capacity by 10% at 40 of the country’s busiest airports,” stated Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a press conference.
The official list of affected airports is not yet known, but according to American press reports, the number of flights will be reduced at airports in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Washington, among others.
International flights will not be affected by the measure, as stated by a source to ABC News, cited by AFP.
United Airlines issued a statement noting that long-haul international flights and flights between connection hubs will not be affected.
“We have a deficit of 2,000 air traffic controllers,” explained Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Wednesday, emphasizing the need to “reduce the pressure” by decreasing the number of flights that air traffic control teams have to oversee.
Republicans and Democrats have been unable to agree on approving a new federal budget, causing a shutdown of government services since October 1.
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are on unpaid leave, while hundreds of thousands more are required to continue working without pay until the budget crisis is resolved. Over 60,000 air traffic controllers and transportation security officials are in the latter situation, though many are still not reporting for duty.
The flight cancellation announcement comes ahead of a weekend of intense air activity in the U.S., due to an approaching holiday on Tuesday, November 11.
State Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Tuesday of the risks of generalized “chaos.” “You might see us shut down parts of the airspace simply because we won’t be able to manage it due to the lack of air traffic controllers,” he said, blaming the Democrats.
“We are going to ask airlines to work with us to reduce their flight schedules,” stated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) President Bryan Bedford on Wednesday, explaining that the intention is to “prevent the situation from worsening.”
Bryan Bedford noted that he could not recall such a reduction happening “during my 35 years in the airline industry.”
“This is a very unusual situation. Our air traffic controllers haven’t received their salaries for a month. We are eager to resume normal operations,” he said.
“The controllers who are still working are putting in extra hours, working more days… and we want to reduce that pressure on them before it becomes a problem,” Bedford added.
On average, 44,000 flights are monitored daily by the FAA, according to its website.
More than 10,000 flights to and from the United States were delayed last weekend, according to flight tracking service FlightAware.
