Major U.S. airlines have started to openly plead with Congress to end a government shutdown that entered its 29th day on Thursday.
“Delta Air Lines implores Congress to immediately pass a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government so that our air traffic controllers, TSA and CBP officers charged with the safety and efficiency of our national airspace can collect the paychecks they deserve,” a Delta spokesperson said in a statement sent to Gizmodo.
In the event of a government shutdown, many federal employees lose their jobs. But some that are considered essential to the protection of life and property, like air traffic controllers and TSA, are required to work without pay or additional support staff.
These workers got a reduced paycheck earlier this month, because the shutdown started a few days into that pay cycle. But on Tuesday, the employees officially missed their first full paycheck.
“Missed paychecks only increase the stress on these essential workers, many of whom are already working mandatory overtime to keep our skies safe and secure,” Delta wrote.
Air traffic controllers, who are the backbone of safe air travel, are working mandatory overtime, clocking in for 10 hours a day, six days a week, according to the labor union National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
Government shutdowns historically put a lot of pressure on air travel. In the absence of their paycheck, government employees have to resort to additional work to make up for the loss, putting pressure on an already overworked group of essential air traffic workers.
In the past, it has led to groups of air traffic controllers calling in sick. The last shutdown, which happened from December 2018 to January 2019 under Trump’s first administration, ended after a record 35 days when ten air traffic controllers called in sick, causing a domino effect that completely grounded flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and caused widespread flight disruptions around the nation.
“A system under stress must be slowed down, reducing efficiency and causing delays for the millions of people who take to the skies every day,” Delta said in the statement.
Earlier this month, during Delta’s earnings call, company executives shared that the shutdown’s financial impact had been “less than a million dollars a day,” without specifying just how much. In an interview with CNBC that day, which was the ninth day of the shutdown, CEO Ed Bastian suggested that the impact was fairly minimal but could increase if the shutdown continued for 10 more days.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that exclusive screening lanes that allowed for quicker security checks for the more premium Delta One customers were not operational at two airports due to the government shutdown.
Also calling on Congress for a fast resolution was United CEO Scott Kirby.
Kirby joined Vice President JD Vance in a roundtable at the White House on Thursday and spoke to the media afterwards.
“While I don’t have a position on which partisan side and how things should be settled with health care, it has been 30 days,” Kirby said. “I also think it is time to pass a clean CR, use that as the opportunity to get into a room behind closed doors and negotiate hard on the real and substantive issues that the American people want our politicians on both sides of the aisle to solve.”
The “clean continuing resolution” at the heart of both Delta and United’s calls is a Republican-led bill that passed a House vote. Senate Democrats are currently still against it, as they continue to call on Republicans to come to the negotiating table on extensions to some Obamacare tax credits that are set to expire soon.
