US air travelers have been warned to brace for chaos as they plan to fly home for Thanksgiving amid the government shutdown.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN‘s Jake Tapper that a ‘substantial’ number of Americans will likely miss their flights home for the holiday due to the dire air traffic control staffing shortage.
‘Yesterday, 18 to 22 controllers in Atlanta didn’t show up. We had 81 staffing [shortage] “triggers” throughout the national airspace yesterday,’ Duffy said during the Sunday morning State of the Union segment.
‘That means controllers weren’t coming to work,’ he continued. ‘It’s only going to get worse. I look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.’
He said airports will be flooded with people eager to fly home to their families, but reiterated that many of them will be met with disappointment.
‘There are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up. We have controllers who are making decisions to feed their families.’
Major delays continue to plague US airports as the record-breaking government shutdown enters its 40th day.
Thousands of flights have been impacted across the country due to a shortage of federal workers at airports, sparking travel misery as the holiday season approaches.
Airports have been experiencing overcrowding and delays as a result of staffing shortages. Pictured: the TSA line a O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Friday
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (left) told CNN ‘s Jake Tapper (right) that a ‘substantial’ number of Americans will likely miss their flights home for Thanksgiving
Some 1,181 flights, both arriving and departing the US on Sunday, have been canceled and 871 have been delayed, according to tracking website FlightAware.
The lengthy government shutdown is the result of a dispute over funding allocations between Congress Democrats and Republicans.
This failure to reach an agreement about the federal budget has also impacted food assistance for millions of Americans and left 1.4 million federal workers, including air traffic controllers and TSA agents, without pay.
With no end to the Senate stalemate in sight, travel chaos is likely to worsen in the coming weeks if lawmakers cannot settle on an agreement to end the shutdown.
More than 13,000 air traffic controllers and about 50,000 TSA agents have been required to work without pay since October 1.
In turn, fewer of these essential federal employees have been showing up for work.
Before the shutdown, the FAA was already grappling with a perpetual shortage of about 3,000 air traffic controllers.
Duffy spoke about the delays last week, blaming Democrats for the stalemate.
Duffy warned that many Americans may miss their flights for Thanksgiving. Pictured: American Airlines planes at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Sunday
‘I’ve been talking to air traffic controllers and there really is frustration. There‘s a shutdown right now, the democrats are focusing on illegal healthcare,’ he told ABC News.
‘They don’t get paid as air traffic controllers. Those are burning frustrations, like in the rest of the country.’
Duffy added that ‘safety is his top priority’ and the administration will ‘delay’ and ‘cancel any kind of flight across the national airspace to make sure people are safe.’
‘There is a level of risk when we have a controller doing two jobs instead of one. We manage and look out for it,’ he said.
