Faa To Cut 10 Percent Of Flights At ‘high-traffic’ Airports Amid Shutdown

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it will cut the scheduled capacity for flights by 10 percent in busy parts of the national airspace starting Friday morning. The dramatic action is poised to cause major travel headaches and potential economic impacts for Americans amid the ongoing federal shutdown.

“I think it’s going to lead to more cancellations,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a news conference. Duffy had warned earlier this week that “mass chaos” was awaiting air travel as soon as next week as the government shutdown lingered.

Exactly which airports will be affected and how many flights will be canceled remains unclear. Bryan Bedford, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, said the agency plans to release the names of 40 affected “high-traffic” areas Thursday.

The FAA has long identified 30 airports as being “core” facilities, such as in Atlanta, Boston, New York City and Dallas-Fort Worth, among other major cities.

Flightradar24, which tracks air traffic, estimates that a 10 percent overall cut in scheduled commercial flights would be around 5,000 flights per day.

Bedford, the nation’s chief aviation regulator, said the government is moving to alleviate pressure on air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay during the ongoing federal shutdown.

“We’re not going to wait for a safety problem to truly manifest itself when the early indicators are telling us we can take action today to prevent things from deteriorating,” Bedford said during a news conference at the Transportation Department’s headquarters in Washington. “We’re trying to be prescriptive, surgical."

Airlines for America, which represents the industry, in a statement said it is “working with the federal government to understand all details of the new reduction mandate and will strive to mitigate impacts to passengers and shippers.”

Sporadic shortages of controllers have cropped up during the lapse in appropriations, causing delays at some major airports. Republicans have used these problems to ding Democrats.

“We’re going to ask the airlines to work with us collaboratively to reduce their schedules pro rata through the day,” Bedford said, calling for a “radical” drop in flights across the 40 markets over the next 48 hours.

Bedford said there’s evidence that controllers are experiencing “fatigue,” citing voluntary safety reports from pilots. That data, he said, has allowed officials to focus on “specific markets.”

“The data’s telling us we need to do more, and we are going to do more,” Bedford said. Despite the dramatic action taken Wednesday, however, he said, “I want to reassure the American travelers that it is absolutely safe” to fly in the United States.

Bedford said the administration is doing this now because officials are proactively examining data, not merely reacting. “We’re not going to wait until we see something flashing red,” he said.

The controller profession is already high-stress, with longstanding shortfalls nationally of controllers and aging equipment in airport towers and other facilities. Controllers are poised to miss a second full paycheck next week.

How long the restrictions will last is unclear. Duffy suggested the decision to lift them will be “data-driven.”

“I imagine, though, when we do open, and we do get pay flowing, and we do get controllers back in ... there’ll be a correlation between those events,” he said.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the independent National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aviation accidents, in a social media post praised the department’s move, saying that conducting safety risk assessments and then using data to mitigate risk is “exactly” what the administration should be doing.