Holiday season is coming up, and although everyone seems ready for vacation, the airports are falling behind.
Videos of lines upon lines of angry travelers and even angrier TSA workers may have popped up on your nightly news channel, with families bustling to get through security checks only to find that their flight has been cancelled.
The latest news of increasing numbers for flight cancellations began on Nov. 7, when more and more travelers started having issues with flights cancelling their flight plans. An all time high reached two days later, when almost 3,000 daily flights were cancelled on Nov 9.
These cancellations were speculated to be due to the government shutdown that had airlines and airport staff continue to work throughout the 43-day shutdown, without any pay.
Due to President Trump signing legislation that the House of Representatives had voted for, just yesterday on Nov. 15, pay for all federal workers and organizations would be promised, restarting the disrupted Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the repairing of all flight traffic was promised after the longest government shutdown in US history.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted all restrictions from commercial flights and the 40 airports that had been restrained due to air traffic concerns for safety. Amongst all these airports were some of the busiest the US has to offer, such as Atlanta International, LAX, Chicago O’Hare and New York’s JFK.
The issue in stopping such internationally renowned airports lies in the fact that the air traffic controllers have reported more and more absences due to financial pressure and stress, due to the government shutdown having started on Oct 1.
Sean Duffy, secretary of transportation and FAA overseer, called for an end of the government shutdown at the beginning of the month, and warned as to what chaos would ensue if this “senseless shutdown” wouldn’t end by the time of this week.
“You will see mass chaos, you will see mass flight delays, you will see mass cancellations and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers,” Duffy said.
He heavily noted the financial stress that he and the FAA had been under ensuring and maintaining traffic controllers and FAA workers overall.
“We’ve tried to pull every dollar we can for different programs where we’re legally allowed to pull and fund,” he said. “But the truth is, the law doesn’t allow me to say ‘Congress hasn’t funded the government, I can just go find money and pay air traffic controllers.’ That’s not the way our Constitution works and our government works.”
As for the airlines themselves, multiple have promised a multitude of information, repayments, refunds and rebookings to all travelers that have been affected by the cancellations. Amongst the airliners of Delta, United and American have been said to be the most trustworthy in regards to helping out when discussing reductions in flight options and changes in routes.
Thankfully, due to the signing of the newfound legislation, airport flight success rates and departure times, airports should return to state of the art standards that all of the U.S. is accustomed to.
