Air traffic controller staffing shortages worsened over the weekend as the nation’s government shutdown hit its fourth week, leading to delays and anxiety, and experts say it won’t get better until air traffic controllers get paid.
More than 50 staffing shortages have been reported since Friday morning, causing delays from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, according to an operations update. Controllers are considered essential workers, so they must work during the shutdown, but are not being paid.
Flights for Los Angeles International Airport were temporarily halted Sunday because of a staffing shortage at the Southern California TRACON, which handles flights arriving or departing. At Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, staffing issues caused a ground delay Sunday that was expected to last until midnight.
Since October 1, there have been at least 264 instances of staffing problems reported at FAA facilities. That’s more than four times the 60 that reported problems on the same dates last year.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday controllers are “wearing thin” and calling in sick as they continue to go without pay for what is difficult, complex work.
The shutdown that started October 1 after lawmakers failed to reach a spending agreement has left thousands of other federal employees unpaid or furloughed and led to a possible break in food assistance that could start next month for tens of millions of Americans.
“Just yesterday … we had 22 staffing triggers,” he said on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures.” “That’s one of the highest that we have seen in the system since the shutdown began.”
Chad Mourning, an assistant professor of computer science at Ohio University who specializes in aviation safety, told CNN he expects the shortage to continue and get worse as the shutdown goes on, “because people can only work so much over time before they burn out.”
During a past shutdown, it was air traffic controllers and TSA agents not arriving for work that triggered a breaking point.
The government shut down for 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019. The shutdown ended after 10 air traffic controllers stayed home, snarling air traffic – though TSA staffing shortages at some of the nation’s largest airports were also a contributing factor.
Not every staffing problem causes delays: Air traffic controllers can route flights to airspace where more people are working. But sometimes there is no choice but to slow flights down so the controllers who show up can maintain safety.
There were more than 6,000 delays for flights in or out of the US Sunday, for all reasons including staffing problems and weather, according to FlightAware, with 27% of American Airlines flights delayed.
Since the start of the shutdown, on the worst days more than 50% of flight delays are due to air traffic control staffing problems, Duffy said in a news conference Friday.
Delays can cascade quickly because of the tightly stacked nature of airport schedules, Mourning said.
At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, some travelers said the shortages had caused anxiety.
A traveler named Connie told CNN she was “flying today on sheer faith.”
“If I weren’t getting paid, I would be very angry that would make it difficult to do my job,” she said. “I’m hoping someone is taking care of them.”
Another traveler, Dylan Cousins, called for an end to the government shutdown.
“I think they probably need to just come to an agreement and reopen the government,” he told CNN. “There’s a lot of things that need to get done and they need to figure out how to make that happen.”
The role of air traffic controllers is crucial because of how many flights take off every day in the United States, Mourning said.
At Hartsfield-Jackson alone, for instance, there are close to 800,000 movements – takeoffs or landings – each year.
“There’s just too many airplanes, so we need someone else to sort of keep an eye out for if two planes are trying to land on the same runway,” he explained. The controllers also control ground movement of planes.
Unlike a car, Mourning pointed out, a fixed-wing aircraft can’t stop in the sky while it waits for traffic to clear. That’s part of why the work is so important, he said.
And it requires a high level of diligence on the part of controllers.
“It is a heightened, hyper-vigilant job,” he said. Controllers are required to retire in their 50s.
The current staffing problems come amid a larger, decades-long shortage of controllers, attributed in part to stressful working conditions and a difficult schedule.
“We have a lot of pent-up grievances on the part of air traffic controllers, and now you’re adding to the mix the fact that they’re not getting paid and that there’s no real end in sight for the shutdown,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis who studies labor organizing.
It’s not the first time air traffic controllers have engaged in what Rosenfeld called “sickouts.”
Controllers are prohibited from joining organized job actions like strikes by federal law. Calling in sick is a kind of workaround “that we do see when there’s friction between employees and employers,” Rosenfeld said.
And because there are relatively few air traffic controllers in the United States, just a “handful” calling out sick at major airports can cause delays.
“Air traffic controllers are a real linchpin in the economy and actions, even by a really small number of them, can cause real pains,” he said.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in a statement it does “not endorse, support, or condone any federal employees participating in or endorsing a coordinated activity that negatively affects the capacity of the NAS, or any other activities that undermine the professional image and reputation of the people we represent.”
“Participating in a job action could result in removal from federal service,” adds the statement.
As controllers continue to go unpaid, Mourning and Rosenfeld said they see no reason for the shortages to alleviate.
“Absolutely we should expect to see more air traffic controllers calling in sick,” Rosenfeld said. Some controllers are reportedly looking for second jobs to make ends meet, he said. He noted especially early-career air traffic controllers who have lower salaries may be struggling.
He described controllers as “a very understaffed and overworked group of employees” even before the shutdown.
With no sign of the government shutdown ending anytime soon, Mourning maintained flying is still safe – it just might take travelers a little longer to get where they’re going.
“The system self-corrects,” he said “But expect delays, right? If you need to be somewhere on a deadline, maybe tell the people expecting you to wait.”
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