The longest government shutdown in American history is officially over.
Congress finally approved a funding bill on Wednesday night, effectively putting an end to the government shutdown on its 42nd day.
The shutdown landed a blow to everyday life, as every worker on the government’s payroll either got furloughed or had to work hard without a paycheck in sight. One of the industries disrupted the hardest was air travel, as the already overworked and understaffed air traffic controllers took sick days to make time for additional income streams.
There were almost 3,000 flight cancellations and 11,229 delays within, into, or out of the United States on Sunday, according to FlightAware data. The numbers amounted to the impact of a light snowstorm, officials said.
The cancellations peaked in response to an FAA-mandated flight reduction across 40 major airports that started at 4% on Friday, and it increased to 6% on Tuesday. The flight reductions were issued as a measure to fight against the very real threat to safety caused by an understaffing of air traffic controllers in some of the busiest airspaces across the country. If a deal was not reached, the cancellations were supposed to bump up gradually to 10% on Friday, and transportation secretary Sean Duffy had warned of future reductions of up to 20%.
You would think that with the shutdown ending, the flight reductions would also disappear. But that’s not the case.
The Department of Transportation will keep the flight reductions in place as long as the threat to safe air travel persists.
“We’re going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel,” Duffy said at a press conference on Tuesday.
The decision to keep the reductions will largely be based on how quickly air traffic controllers who are still working will report back to work. Last week, FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said that as many as 20-40% of controllers at the 30 largest airports were not showing up for work.
But things are looking up. “Today is a good sign,” Duffy said on Tuesday.
The air traffic controllers will be paid 70% of their back pay for the paychecks they missed within 24-48 hours of the government reopening. The remaining 30% will arrive roughly a week later, Duffy said.
Also helping get the air traffic controller numbers up could be a Monday night Truth Social post from President Donald Trump, waving the potential of $10,000 bonuses for the air traffic controllers who worked through the shutdown without pay. It’s not certain if a bonus of that level will actually be awarded.
But even the removal of the flight reduction mandate won’t be enough to relieve the stress on air travel. Experts say that travelers will continue to suffer, even after the flight reductions are completely lifted. With only two weeks left until Thanksgiving, which is set to spark the busy holiday travel season, the air travel industry is bracing for the worst.
“We are preparing for record Thanksgiving travel, with some 31 million passengers expected, and the busy shipping season is coming up,” industry group Airlines for America said in a statement on Wednesday. “However, airlines cannot flip a switch and resume normal operations immediately after a vote—there will be residual effects for days.”
Flights work on a tight schedule, carefully woven to account for not just the traffic up in the air but also where the crew and the aircraft will be stationed for the next flight. So one cancellation can disrupt many other flights, snowballing into a scheduling nightmare that could take a couple of days to untangle.
What’s worse is that the shutdown could have exacerbated an existing air traffic controller shortage in the country.
The shutdown came at a bad time, when the FAA was already facing a critical shortage of air traffic controllers and American air travel was shaken by terrifying incidents, like the fatal crash between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet in Washington D.C., earlier this year.
The DOT is working to combat that, having taken up an effort to modernize the air traffic control system and increase the staffing of air traffic controllers. But the shutdown will likely be a setback for the Department on the way to that goal.
In Tuesday’s press conference, Duffy said that while four air traffic controllers used to retire every day prior to the shutdown, that number has now gone up to roughly 15 to 20.
“Long after you all finish covering the shutdown, we are going to be stuck dealing with this problem. We are about 2000 controllers short, trying to make up that difference,” Duffy said.
