By Jacob Burg
Flights throughout the United States will be reduced to a “trickle” leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday due to increasing air traffic controller staffing shortages during the record-breaking government shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an interview on Nov. 9.
Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it was beginning a multi-step slowdown of U.S. air travel on Nov. 7 with a 4 percent reduction in flights at 40 major airports. That rate will increase to 6 percent on Nov. 11; to 8 percent on Nov. 13; and finally to 10 percent on Nov. 14, according to the FAA’s emergency order—the first of its kind in history.
The agency, alongside the Department of Transportation, said it was issuing the reduction order to ensure safety while grappling with a significant shortage of air traffic controllers who are fatigued and working without pay during the government shutdown, which reached its 40th day on Sunday.
Even before the FAA issued the order, strain on the national airspace led to thousands of flight delays and cancellations on some days during the weeks since the funding lapse began on Oct. 1.
Duffy told CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview that aired on Sunday that 18 of 22 air traffic controllers in Atlanta didn’t show up to work on Saturday, and there were 81 staffing triggers throughout the entire national airspace that day.
“That means controllers weren’t coming to work … it’s only going to get worse,” he said. “The two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.”
Duffy said many Americans want to see family for the holidays or have to travel for work or other reasons, and “many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane.”
Referring to the government’s funding lapse, Duffy said “there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up.”
The transportation secretary explained that some air traffic controllers aren’t showing up to work because they may have young children at home and are making tough decisions to work a second job and keep food on the table.
“We have controllers who are making decisions to feed their families as opposed to come to towers … or centers and do their jobs. And I want them to come to work. The problem is they’re confronted with real economic problems,” Duffy added. “They’re taking jobs with Uber Eats or Lyft or whatever, because they have bills to pay. Some of them are being evicted. Some of them have childcare issues. They have to put gas in the car.”
When asked if the Transportation Department could estimate how many Americans won’t be able to travel to be with their families for the holiday season this year due to impacts from the government shutdown, Duffy said, “The number is going to be substantial.”
“It’s only gotten worse as we’ve gone through the shutdown. We’re on day 40 now … the largest number of outage of controllers was on Halloween,” he added.
As of 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, there were more than 2,000 flight cancellations and more than 6,000 delays into or out of the United States, according to flight tracker FlightAware.
More than 5 million Americans fly for Thanksgiving every year, based on data from the American Automobile Association. Aviation trade group Airlines for America estimated that more than 31 million passengers flew on commercial flights between the Friday before Thanksgiving and the Monday after in 2024.
On Dec. 1, 2024, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the Transportation Security Administration set a record—more than 3 million—for the number of travelers screened in a single day.
This year, Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 27.
