Americans will feel the impacts of the government shutdown almost all Democratic Senators have consistently voted to prolong — as flight cancellations, reductions and delays seek to impact travel plans as the holiday season looms.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency order to 40 airports across the country, calling them to reduce their flight schedules by 4% starting Friday, while gradually increasing the restrictions until flights are trimmed by 10%. The depleted flight schedules, pushed in part by fatigued air traffic controllers who have been working without pay, will spread the shutdown’s impacts onto traveling Americans just weeks before Thanksgiving.
During his floor speech on Friday, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso recalled Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s remarks from October that “every day gets better for us” as the shutdown stretches on, asking during his speech, “I’m wondering who ‘us’ is.”
“Certainly not the American people. Certainly not the people whose flights were grounded today all across the country,” Barrasso said. “To keep our airlines and skies safe, the FAA directed airlines to reduce the number of flights. It’s the right thing to do. This has impacted airports all across the country. That’s the impact of what the Democrats are doing by keeping this government shut.”
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has thus far voted to keep the government shut down, shared the sentiment that slicing flight schedules was the right decision, telling reporters Friday morning that “safety matters.”
“I’m glad that they are taking whatever steps they think are appropriate for safety, but I would prefer that the Republicans let us get this government open again and pay all of our federal workers.”
The Senate has voted 14 times in 38 days on a GOP-backed funding measure to reopen the government — and only three members of the Democratic Caucus have so far crossed the aisle to vote for it. Just five more senators voting in favor of the measure are needed to reach the 60-vote threshold to pass it and end the shutdown.
As of 12:30 p.m. Friday, roughly 850 cancellations had already taken place, according to Politico, although some are due to external factors like weather.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a Breitbart News event Friday that safety measures were “going in the wrong direction” with planes and equipment being in the wrong place, cases of planes flying too close to one another, and increased complaints from pilots and controllers of being “less responsive” and “more stressed.”
“We’re gonna have to continue to assess the pressure in the airspace and make decisions that may, again, move us from 10 percent to 15 percent, maybe to 20 [percent]” when it comes to flight cuts, Duffy told Fox News on Friday. “I don’t want to see that.”
The days surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday are among the busiest travel days of the year. In 2024, the Sunday after Thanksgiving hit a new travel record with 3.09 million passengers going through TSA.
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, who represents Newark Liberty International Airport, reflected on his time as a government employee going unpaid during a shutdown, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation air traffic controllers are feeling like “collateral damage.”
“Yeah, it’s obviously put in a whole incredible amount of strain on people all over this nation right now, including folks back home, which is why we absolutely need to have negotiations and fix this and get this done,” Kim, who has voted with much of the rest of his party to prolong the shutdown, told the DCNF on Friday. “[Air traffic controllers] feel like they’re the collateral damage of what is happening right now. And, you know, they’re not wrong. And like I felt this on the other side where I was a federal government employee during shutdowns and didn’t get paid, trying to figure out if there was, you know, money I could borrow from my parents or something. And it wasn’t easy.”
House Transportation Committee Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, said “the sky is absolutely safe” following the FAA’s emergency order reducing flights.
“But there are going to be delays. I’m going to be getting on a flight back to Washington here in another two days. And I flew back from Washington just two days ago. So I feel very comfortable, very safe.” Graves told Fox News on Friday. “The air traffic controllers are still showing up. They’re still doing their job. It’s a very stressful job, and they’ve got added stress on top of that. But they are doing their jobs, and I applaud them for it.”
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