Air travel during the government shutdown has been challenging — and it could disrupt some people’s holiday plans. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle” around Thanksgiving.
“We have a number of people who want to get home for the holidays. They want to see their family. They want to celebrate this great American holiday. Listen, many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up,” Duffy told CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
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During Halloween, there were 61 controllers out, Duffy said, while on Saturday, there were 81.
The continuing shutdown is showing signs of exacerbating the already ongoing air traffic controller shortage. Air traffic controllers are working without pay while the government remains shut down.
Some have had to take second jobs, Duffy said, and are “making decisions to feed their families, as opposed to come to towers or TRACONs or centers and do their jobs.”
“The controllers that I’ve talked to said, a lot of them, we can miss one paycheck,” Duffy said. “They told me that virtually none of them can miss two paychecks.”
Before the shutdown, Duffy continued, about four controllers retired a day. Now, that number has risen to 15-20 a day, meaning that the effects of the shutdown could linger after it ends.
“This is gonna live on, in air travel, well beyond the time frame that this government opens back up,” Duffy said.
More than 1,300 flights in the U.S. were canceled on Saturday, FlightAware showed. On Sunday, there were more than 2,700 cancellations in the U.S.
The Federal Aviation Administration last week ordered 40 commercial airlines to reduce flights by 4%. Then, it gave another order to increase that to 10% by Nov. 14.
On Nov. 7, during an event with Breitbart, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that flight reductions could go up to as high as 20% if the government shutdown continues, The Hill reported.
Flight reductions criticized by Schumer
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the cuts as “transparently political” on the Senate floor Saturday.
“This isn’t about safety. It’s about politics masquerading as safety — the level that they will go to, putting the American people in discomfort and worse — is unprecedented,” he said.
Duffy defended the flight cuts in his CNN interview on Sunday, saying that the decision was made based on data coming from the safety team.
“I have more complaints coming into the FAA from pilots who are saying that air traffic controllers are not as responsive. They seem stressed, or they’re not using the appropriate language because they’re under pressure,” he said. “So I look at that data that came from the safety team, and the trend line is going in the wrong direction, so I need to take action and make sure that we keep people safe.”
Government shutdown
Senators made a rare weekend appearance at the Capitol in an attempt to end the shutdown. A sticking point has been a Republican-led funding plan that Democrats say lets Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax subsidies expire. Schumer proposed a one-year extension to the ACA subsidies to reopen the government, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called the deal a “nonstarter.”
“There’s still only one path out,” Thune said Saturday. “It’s a clean funding extension. The House has already passed a clean funding extension. The president supports one and would sign it into law immediately.”
