Breaking News
Long-simmering challenges have put air traffic controllers front and center during the shutdown
The first three weeks of this government shutdown have positioned air traffic controllers — a group that often rode out previous stoppages with minimal fanfare — as a key economic crimp point so far.
Scattered flight delays have been seen across the country for weeks, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy previously calculating that shortages in control towers are responsible for about 53% of them.
Just this past weekend, tracking site FlightAware clocked over 5,000 US delays on both Saturday and Sunday. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said staffing shortages were a major culprit.
It’s a notable change for this shutdown go-around — previous stoppages saw much greater focus on TSA agents — and comes after years of enormous pressure on the nation’s approximately 13,000 air traffic controllers.
The FAA is currently short of its training goals by about 3,500 controllers.
That has led to mandatory overtime in recent years, and now the shutdown has cut off paychecks and appears to have led at least some controllers to call in sick — further exacerbating the shortage.
The situation for controllers is also just one example of an increasingly tense environment at airports that have seen disruptions from factors like weather as well as a shortage of pilots.
“The system has been stretched more and more since 2019,” noted Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO International president Sara Nelson in a recent Yahoo Finance appearance, referring to the last government shutdown.
“It is less safe than it was before this government shutdown started,” she added of the flying environment this month, “and every single day that goes on, it becomes less and less safe.”
Controllers got a partial paycheck earlier this month and are set to fully miss the pay they’re due to receive next week.
That factor, Secretary Duffy says, could make things worse in a hurry.
“I’m concerned about the next week,” he said in a Fox News appearance Monday.
He notes that some controllers are already missing work, adding “I think you could see more” disruptions soon, with staffing shortfalls rippling quickly and hitting controllers already working over 50 hours a week.
With an average salary north of $140,000, controllers have historically been seen as more able to weather the temporary paycheck stoppage that comes with a shutdown.
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents — who typically earn much less — have been seen as a more volatile factor at airports during a shutdown.
This time around, the roles are at least partially reversed.
For one thing, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently announced that at least some TSA agents will be paid. No similar pot of money has been in the offing for air traffic controllers.
Various efforts are underway to try to change that.
There are reports of the Trump administration searching for money that could be tapped for air traffic controllers and bills on Capitol Hill to pay either all “excepted” workers or just aviation workers.
But all options appear to be long shots at the moment.
By law, both TSA employees (who operate under the Department of Homeland Security) and air traffic controllers (employed by the FAA) are required to receive full back pay once the government reopens.
Airlines for America, the trade association that represents airlines in Washington, noted in a recent message to lawmakers that the stoppage could be especially damaging as it “is coming at a critical moment” in the middle of efforts to both modernize the air traffic control system and get air traffic control facilities fully staffed.
It’s emblematic of a fear that, in addition to chaos at the airports in the weeks ahead, the shutdown could cause problems that may take years to unwind.
Much of the focus is on the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, which is charged with training every air traffic controller in the country.
The expectation — voiced repeatedly by figures like Nick Daniels of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association — is that the academy could run out of money by the end of the month if the shutdown lasts much longer.
Duffy has also expressed worry about the long-term effects of the shutdown and even raised the possibility of permanent layoffs for some workers charged with training newly minted air traffic controllers.
The secretary has made clear that in nearly any scenario, the shutdown “has a longer-lasting impact on our ability to make up the ground in the shortages that we have with air traffic controllers.”
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow’s stock prices
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance