Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Sunday that air travel will worsen before the holidays as the U.S. enters the third day of federally mandated flight reductions.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Duffy told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union. “I look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving. You’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.”
Duffy added that a “substantial” number of people will miss celebrating the holidays with their families due to travel delays caused by Federal Aviation Administration-mandated flight cancellations at 40 high-traffic airports, which went into effect on Friday.
The cuts come as the FAA deals with shortages of air traffic controllers amid the dragging government shutdown. As essential workers, air traffic controllers are required to work during a government shutdown, even without pay.
More than 4,200 flights had been delayed and 1,520 canceled as of Sunday morning, in part because of the mandate. Duffy said there were 81 “staffing triggers” throughout the national airspace on Saturday — meaning operations were modified due to staffing shortages — and noted that “18 of 22 controllers in Atlanta didn’t show up.”
The FAA-mandated flight cancellations mean a 4% reduction in flight capacity this weekend and will ramp up to 6% by Tuesday, 8% by Thursday and up to 10% by Friday, according to the agency.
Despite the decrease in air traffic, Duffy said Sunday that travel remains safe during the shutdown.
“We’re working overtime to make sure that it is safe to travel,” he said. “If we have staffing triggers in locations in the American airspace, what we will do is, we will slow traffic, which means you will have delays, and then airlines might cancel flights.”
Duffy, however, expressed concern about what lies ahead and stated that voting to reopen the government is the “best approach to get America back operational.”
“Next Friday, it’s going to be at 10% to reduce the pressure on controllers,” he said.
“The problem is that as I try to reduce the pressure by lowering flights, I have more controllers that keep not coming to work,” Duffy added. “And so the pressure goes back up again.”
