Transportation secretary warns about Thanksgiving air journey

WASHINGTON — A “substantial” variety of Americans will doubtless miss Thanksgiving with their households due to air-travel snarls because of the federal government shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Sunday.

“Yesterday, 18 to 22 controllers in Atlanta didn’t show up. We had 81 staffing [shortage] ‘triggers’ throughout the national airspace yesterday,” Duffy instructed CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“It’s only going to get worse. I look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle,” he mentioned.

Air-traffic controllers have been pressured to work with out pay since Oct. 1 due to the continued authorities shutdown, which reached its historic fortieth day Sunday.

As a end result, most of the controllers have needed to choose up different gigs akin to with Uber and DoorDash to make ends meet. Others are calling in sick or just retiring early.

“I used to have about four controllers retire a day before the shutdown. I’m now up to 15 to 20 a day that are retiring,” Duffy mentioned. “So it’s going to be harder for me to come back from that and have more controllers controlling the airspace.”

Before the shutdown, Duffy had been scrambling to modernize the nation’s air-traffic-control system and quickly prepare new controllers to cope with staffing shortages.

The transportation secretary warned that even after the tip of the federal government shutdown, there shall be lasting penalties from the closure on the air business.

Last week, Duffy warned that up to twenty% of flights could possibly be scrapped within the coming weeks if the authorities shutdown rages on. Nearly 2,000 flights have been cancelled Saturday, according to FlightAware.

Despite the government-shutdown-induced staffing snarls, Duffy harassed that air journey continues to be secure.

“We’re working overtime to make sure that it is safe to travel,” he mentioned. “And so if we have staffing triggers in all locations, what we’ll do is we will slow traffic, which means you’ll have delays, and then airlines might cancel flights.”

All of this may doubtless come to a head round Thanksgiving, which is without doubt one of the busiest journey instances of the 12 months within the US.

“Many [wannabe fliers] are not going to be able to get on an airplane because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up,” Duffy mentioned.

“We have controllers who, again, are making decisions to feed their families,” he mentioned. “The problem is, they’re confronted with real economic problems.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has introduced plans to maintain the higher chamber in session till lawmakers attain a deal to reopen the federal government.