Air travel chaos will continue long after the government reopens

The longest government shutdown in the country’s history may soon end. Once then, federal museums and monuments will reopen. SNAP payments will start flowing again. Tens of thousands of essential federal employees, including air traffic controllers, will receive pay for the first time since October.

But air travel won’t return to normal anytime soon.

Airport disruptions have been the most visible impact of the government shutdown since it began on October 1. Since then, an increasing percentage of air traffic controllers have taken leave rather than working an unpaid job. Staffing levels were already critical in many facilities before the shutdown. The additional burden of unscheduled callouts caused an immediate increase in flight disruptions.

In mid-October, when we… Tracking started for the first time As a result of the effects of the closure on air traffic, around one in 10 flights were delayed or canceled – double the disruption rate compared to the same time last year. But now all of the country’s air traffic controllers have not been paid for at least six weeks. Staff shortages have affected operations Half of the country’s “core 30” airports. On Halloween, nearly 80 percent of air traffic controllers were absent from the facilities that control the airspace over New York.

To try to mitigate the impact of the staff shortage, Transport Minister Sean Duffy has ordered airlines to reduce up to 10% of their flight volume over the next few weeks. But it is unlikely to be effective.

“It’s going to have a really minimal impact on the amount of volume that air traffic controllers deal with, especially with the volume increasing as we get closer to the holidays,” said Marcus Miller, the air traffic controller who handled the air traffic control mission. Woe to TikTok As @prophacat.

At Truth Social, President Donald Trump tried to combine threats with incentives to put the controllers back to work.

“For the air traffic controllers who were great patriots and took no time off for the Democratic shutdown scam, I will recommend a reward of $10,000 per person.” to publish On the evening of November 10th. “For those who did nothing but complain and took time off… I’m not happy with you.”

But they were unable to prevent the commercial aviation system from approaching complete collapse. On November 7, the four largest U.S. airlines nearly canceled or postponed flights 40 percent of their tripsThis is according to the flight tracking application Flighty. Two days later, on the ninth day, they canceled the half Of their entire schedule. In the past four days, an average of 2,100 flights were canceled daily, and 8,800 flights were delayed. (For context, the daily average this time last year was 200 cancellations and 3,000 delays.)

Every delay and cancellation flows through the system. Most airlines try to keep their planes in the air for a while 12 hours or more every day; High maximum time means maximum time in generating revenue. Likewise, airlines want to keep their pilots as busy as possible, up to the federally permitted limit Eight hours of flight For each “working period”.

Airline recruitment PhD in MathematicsComputer science and others Quantitative fields To build advanced operational models that ensure the improvement of every part of its operations to achieve efficiency and profitability. These models are planned weeks to months in advance. They assume normal levels of disruption — cancellation rates closer to the 2024 average of 1 percent, for example.

When disruptions occur, recovery can be complex. It is not possible for airlines to simply “reset” their fleets at the end of the day. They will waste millions of dollars on empty flights and crew rescheduling. Often, their only option – financially, operationally or both – is to recover slowly over several days. A major winter storm that overwhelmed the Southwest’s scheduling systems in 2022 caused disruptions Nine days. The CrowdStrike outage, which lasted only a few hours, resulted in… Several days of issues For most airlines.

A government shutdown is a whole different beast. It is not limited to one airline or one day. Its effects raged for six weeks, affecting all airlines everywhere in the country. They will continue to get worse until air traffic controllers return to work at full capacity.

So, even if the lockdown ends tomorrow, flying will not return to normal for a while – at least a few days, maybe a few weeks. It’s possible the unrest could continue all the way until Thanksgiving. With more than 31 million people expected to travel by air this year, the holiday could plunge an already stressed system into crisis again.

“Air traffic controllers don’t like to be on the news.” Miller said. “If politicians want to shut down the government because of X, Y and Z, let them do it. But don’t touch air traffic control. It hurts everyone.”