The airline industry is among the first to show signs of strain as a result of the government shutdown, just one week after funding lapsed on Oct. 1.
Flight delays, an air traffic controller shortage, and long security lines have been reported this week across the United States — problems that President Donald Trump dubbed during remarks in the Oval Office on Tuesday as “Democrat delays” because Senate Democrats have declined to support the House Republican-passed spending bill.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said as many as 50% of employees at individual facilities have called out on some days since last week.
“They’re not wealthy,” Duffy said during a press conference at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. “They don’t have three or four or five months of cash sitting in their bank accounts. Like many of us, they go from one paycheck to the next, and they rely on that to pay the bills.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has roughly 13,000 air traffic controllers still working during the shutdown. About one-quarter of the agency’s total 45,000 employees were furloughed last week, while the remainder are on the job but will not receive pay for their work on their normal payday, according to the government’s shutdown contingency plan.
As of Monday, a dozen FAA facilities reported staffing shortages, according to an advisory from the agency. There were delays in Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Indianapolis, and Washington.
In Newark, New Jersey, and Hollywood Burbank Airport near Los Angeles, ground delays were put into place, meaning that the control towers had to halt planes because they were short-staffed in their ability to monitor the activity.
Duffy said a “slight increase” in sick leave at two air traffic control facilities contributed to delays at East Coast airports.
Others fear that the worst is yet to come. With roughly 45,000 U.S. flights daily, even a seemingly small impact in one region can have a ripple effect.
Capt. Jason Ambrosi, the president of Air Line Pilots Association International, predicted shortly after the shutdown that the impact on government workers would undoubtedly flow over to airline and airport employees.
“Another gov’t shutdown is a setback for aviation safety,” Ambrosi, whose organization represents 80,000 airline pilots in the U.S. and Canada, wrote in a post to X last Wednesday. “Controllers, TSA officers & others are furloughed or working w/out pay, projects are stalled, & negotiations delayed.”
Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot and spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, the union that represents 15,000 American pilots, told the Washington Examiner on Friday that the impact had yet to be felt, but the industry was bracing for what could be in store depending on how long the shutdown goes.
The industry fears that this shutdown could worsen, similar to what happened during the 2019 government shutdown, when the FAA was forced to limit traffic at certain major U.S. airports due to a shortage of air traffic controllers in the tower.
The shutdown’s impact on the FAA is now being felt by airlines, pilots, flight attendants, and airport staff members who are seeing operations disrupted.
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The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents 20,000 controllers, engineers, and flight safety workers, has maintained that it is still safe to fly.
“It is safe to fly,” NATCA President Nick Daniels said Monday in an interview on Fox News. “The American men and women that serve as our air traffic controllers, they’re showing up to work. They’re going to do every single thing they can.”
