And it will only get worse.
And it will only get worse.
T he nation’s airline system is heading for a crisis caused by the government shutdown.
Among the 730,000 federal employees working without pay are TSA airport-security workers and air traffic controllers. Hundreds of TSA agents are calling in sick, leading to long security lines at many airports.
But the real problem is with air traffic control. On Monday, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), which represents 14,000 controllers, started a flyer campaign telling travelers how the ongoing shutdown threatens aviation safety and exacerbates delays. “Every day the shutdown continues, the negative consequences to the National Airspace System and its employees are compounding,” the flyers announced.
Sure enough, on Wednesday, there was a temporary ground stop at Newark International Airport, and the Flight Aware website listed 3,115 flight delays nationally as of 6 p.m. on Wednesday. Delays were at 56 minutes in Boston, 32 minutes at Washington National, and 45 minutes at San Diego. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox News that delays are “a sign that the controllers are wearing thin.”
Their first missed paycheck this Tuesday was a turning point. Just as with the 35-day government shutdown in 2018, controllers have begun calling in “sick” more often — sometimes to take a temporary second job while they are not paid. Secretary Duffy said at a news conference at LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday that “almost every controller can’t make it . . . without two paychecks.”
NATCA President Nick Daniels, who joined Duffy, said controllers are working mandatory overtime six days a week, ten hours a day, even while not getting paid. “Day in and day out, air traffic controllers have to have 100 percent of focus,” Daniels warned. “They should never get off a night shift and then go wait tables and then go move the commerce and people through this airspace.”
It’s illegal for controllers to strike, but the government isn’t about to add to the chaos by firing anybody who doesn’t appear for work. Instead, to maintain safety, the government will reduce the number of planes in the sky, which will lead to delayed and canceled flights.
Even if the government shutdown were to end this week, damage has already been done. “There’s no question that the shutdown will only set us backwards,” said Erik Hansen, senior vice president for the U.S. Travel Association. “The real risk is that it will do irreparable harm to our efforts to hire more air traffic controllers and to modernize air traffic control.”
Indeed, Secretary Duffy warned that the funding to pay students at the FAA’s training academy in Oklahoma City is running out. The students get stipends while they complete training, but Duffy said “that money is about to run out, and we’re seeing several of our students drop out of the Academy.”
Democrats insist they are continuing the government shutdown for only one purpose: to prevent price increases to the subsidized, Covid-era Obamacare premiums for millions of Americans. They ignore that Democrats — when they controlled both the White House and Congress in 2022 –wrote into law that the subsidies would expire late in 2025.
But as the government shutdown drags on, it’s clear that many more people are about to be affected by Democrats’ intransigence. There are the 42 million Americans who depend on SNAP food benefits. Government workers are also going without paychecks. And the traveling public may see its flight plans more and more disrupted as the holiday season approaches.
It’s clear that Democrats have not grasped that they are losing whatever moral high ground they thought they had in the shutdown.
“Of course, there will be families that are going to suffer,” Katherine Clark, the No. 2 ranking House Democrat, candidly told Chad Pergram of Fox News last week, speaking of the shutdown. “It is one of the FEW leverage times we have.”
If any Republican were to admit that he supported suffering and was intentionally withholding federal paychecks for political “leverage,” you can only imagine the howls of media outrage. Clark largely got a pass for her faux pas, but it’s notable that Democrats have not been able to count on the full-throated support of the establishment media during this shutdown.
Democrats should also remember how the last government shutdown, in 2019, ended. On January 25 that year, a critical mass of controllers at New York and Washington’s ATC centers called in sick, leading to ground stops and delays across the Northeast. A short-term funding bill was passed that afternoon and signed by President Trump that night.
If Democrats are smart, they’ll realize it’s time to get out ahead of that oncoming traffic.