Airlines across the country continued to slash flights Monday as the FAA’s mandatory air traffic reductions entered their fourth day.
Over 1,500 flights into, out of, or within the U.S. were canceled as of Monday morning, according to FlightAware. Chicago O’Hare, Chicago Midway, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, LaGuardia, and Newark, New Jersey, saw the highest number of cancellations.
Several thousand U.S. flights were dropped over the weekend after the FAA imposed a 4% reduction in an effort to ease the burden on air traffic controllers who are working without pay while the federal government is shut down. That figure is expected to rise to 6% on Tuesday, 8% on Thursday, and 10% on Friday.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN that a growing number of air traffic controllers are no longer showing up for work, which will only exacerbate disruptions for travelers.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Duffy said. “I look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.”
“We have a number of people who want to get home for the holidays, they want to see their families, they want to celebrate this great American holiday,” the secretary added. “Listen, many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly unless this thing doesn’t open back up.”
Local media outlets have reported that some would-be fliers are now preemptively canceling their trips or making plans to drive or take a train. Car rental company Hertz has reportedly seen a 20% increase in one-way rentals, according to Fortune.
Beginning of the End?
Over a month of political gridlock appeared to break Sunday night as eight U.S. Senate Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of reopening the federal government in exchange for a later vote on healthcare subsidies. The deal has outraged other Democrats in the Senate and many in the U.S. House, who feel their party should hold out to secure a guarantee on the subsidies.
Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said Sunday that efforts to pressure the GOP were not working.
“It’s been six weeks,” he said, according to Axios. “Republicans made it clear they weren’t going to discuss the healthcare issue, the Affordable Care Act tax credits, until the shutdown was over.”
There is still more work to do before the federal government can reopen. Any one senator can delay consideration of the new compromise bill, and the House would have to reconvene and sign off on it.
And even when the government does reopen, it will take several days and perhaps weeks before air traffic control operations are fully stabilized, Duffy has said.
