Airports and Airlines Are Crawling Out of the Shutdown

On Wednesday evening, the longest government shutdown in US history ended. Fliers hoped it would also end the looming specter of airport cancellations and delays. Thanksgiving is coming, and with it the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the year.

Travelers should expect scattered delays and cancellations, aviation experts say, as airlines get their crews and aircraft back into place after weeks of acute staffing shortages. Last week, the US Federal Aviation Administration began requiring airlines to cancel flights, up to 6 percent of them earlier this week in 40 airports, some of the country’s busiest. The agency said the measure was necessary to keep airspace safe as controllers and security professionals missed their second straight paychecks. The effects of that decision were compounded by an inadequate number of controllers on duty, which led to delays and cancellations across the country.

For the next few days, though, it’ll be difficult to sort shutdown-related delays from the standard chaos of the holiday season. “It’ll be hard to get everything up and running quickly, “ says Tim Kiefer, a former air traffic controller who is now a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “But you would have experienced some delays because of weather, equipment issues, or staffing, whether there was a government shutdown or not.”

“Airlines cannot flip a switch and resume normal operations immediately after a vote—there will be residual effects for days,” Chris Sununu, the president and CEO of the airline trade group Airlines for America, said in a written statement.

Some residual effects could last longer, as workers in the aviation system grapple with yet another interruption to their work and pay schedule. Federal employees have gone through four shutdowns in the past two decades. Controllers especially have worked long hours amid worker shortages for nearly 15 years, as years of underhiring, mandatory retirements at age 56, and Covid-era interruptions in training have made it hard to get new controllers certified and into facilities. It can take around two years—and as long as five—to train new workers to be air traffic controllers.

Unlike in past shutdowns, the FAA kept open its academy in Oklahoma City, so workers didn’t have to halt their training (though they and their instructors went without pay). Still, the process of hiring new controllers stopped during the shutdown. The FAA did not respond to questions about how and when it might restart the hiring process.

“Does this deter from recruitment?” says Kiefer. “There is that potential of [prospective controllers] saying, ‘I don’t want to be subject to the appropriations process every 16 months and not get paid.’”

And speaking of pay: It might take weeks for federal workers to be made whole. In 2019, Kiefer said, he didn’t get his complete paycheck until about five weeks after Congress reopened the government.