FAA to reduce flights because of shutdown's air traffic controller shortage 

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is reducing flight capacity by 10 percent at 40 “high-traffic” areas around the country starting Friday morning, its administrator, Bryan Bedford, said Wednesday.

Bedford, during a press conference alongside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, called the move “appropriate to continue to take the pressure off of” air traffic controllers, who are set to miss their second consecutive paycheck on Tuesday amid the record-long government shutdown.

Controller absences have increased as a result, leading to travel disruptions nationwide. 

“The data is telling us we need to do more, and we are going to do more,” Bedford said. “And I want to reassure the American travelers that it is absolutely safe to fly in the American skies.”

The Hill has reached out to the FAA to clarify whether flight capacity will be reduced at 40 airports or in 40 regions.

The decision comes a day after Duffy warned that the Department of Transportation may have to close certain parts of the country’s airspace if the funding lapse persists.

Duffy reiterated Wednesday that while he has asked controllers to come to work and not take second jobs, he is “not naive to understand that they’re trying to figure out how they meet their daily [financial] obligations.”

“Many of these employees, they’re the head of household,” he said. “They have their spouse at home, they have a child, or two, or three, and when they lose income, they are confronted with real-world difficulties in how they pay their bills.”

Duffy also called the FAA’s move “proactive” and an attempt to keep the country’s airspace safe. The Transportation secretary said that the department will work with airlines to reduce capacity “in a systematic way” but acknowledged that delays and cancellations will increase. 

Airlines for America, which represents a host of U.S. commercial airlines and cargo carriers, said in a statement it is “working with the federal government to understand all details of the new reduction mandate.” The group added it “will strive to mitigate impacts to passengers and shippers.”

So far Wednesday, over 2,100 flights within, into or out of the U.S. have been delayed, with nearly 150 such flights cancelled, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. It is unclear what percentage of those flights were disrupted due to staffing shortages. 

“We had to have a gut check of what is our job? Is it to make sure there’s minimal delays, or minimal cancellations, or is our job to make sure we make the hard decisions to continue to keep the airspace safe? That is our job, is safety,” Duffy said. 

Bedford said that the restrictions will be in place “until we see the metrics start to move in the right direction,” while Duffy noted the possibility of further capacity limits “if the data goes in the wrong direction.”

In addition to the capacity restrictions, Bedford said that the FAA is restricting space launches, limiting visual flight rule travel in markets with “continued” staffing shortages and implementing other countermeasures “that will give us the highest level of comfort” in the safety of the country’s airspace.

“We’re not going to wait until we see something flashing red to say, ‘Oh, we should take action now.’ We want to keep everything in the green,” the administrator added.

—Updated at 6:09 p.m. EDT