Congress is potentially inching toward a deal to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, but if you’re hoping flights will be back on track the next day, don’t count on it.
Over the past few weeks, airlines have slashed flights at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports to make up for the shortage of air traffic controllers who have been furloughed or have simply stopped showing up to work because of the stop in pay. Thousands of routes have been canceled, passengers stranded and schedules scrambled. Even if lawmakers make a deal, the mess won’t magically untangle itself.
“There's going to be extensive disruption across the entire nation’s air transportation system,” Henry Harteveldt, president of the Atmosphere Research Group, told USA Today. “And the consequences could last longer than the shutdown.”
When the shutdown lifts, airlines will have to rebuild their operations piece by piece. Reinstating a full schedule isn’t like flipping a switch, it’s more like reassembling a machine that’s been running on half its parts. “It’s going to be a step-up, phased-in approach,” Harteveldt explained.
Canceling flights doesn’t just pull one plane out of the sky, after all. It throws off the entire flow of aircraft and crew across the system.
"Airlines have to consider the flow of aircraft and crew when they cancel flights,” said Ahmed Abdelghany, associate dean for research at the David B. O'Maley College of Business at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in an official statement. "If you cancel both flights of a round-trip loop, the aircraft and crew end up in the right place later. That avoids stranding planes and crew, which is what makes recovery possible." In other words, the chaos has to be managed carefully, not hastily.
Major hubs like Atlanta, Chicago O’Hare and LAX have been hit hardest, but even smaller airports are feeling the squeeze. Connecting passengers are in for more headaches, too. And the biggest problem might still be on the ground. The FAA’s staffing shortage, already critical before the shutdown, has worsened. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN that retirements have surged from about four controllers a day to nearly twenty. The agency is now short between 1,000 and 2,000 air traffic controllers nationwide.
That means flight caps and delays aren’t going anywhere soon. “It’s not that the day the shutdown ends, this capacity restriction is lifted,” said Hopper analyst Hayley Berg. "They're not going to lift this capacity reduction until air traffic control and the FAA are operating at the staffing level they need—and that might not happen immediately."
So while politicians celebrate reopening the government, travelers may still be stuck on standby. “Even if the government reopens, recovery will still take time,” Abdelghany said. Thanksgiving, he warned, could still be a logistical nightmare.
Good luck to us all.