We just came off what may have been the most chaotic weekend at U.S. airports in years, with flight cancellations piling up across the country.
And while there does now appear to be momentum in Washington toward reopening the government, the Trump administration is making ominous predictions about what air travel could look like soon if the shutdown drags on.
“I think we would see that significant disruption coming this next weekend. Maybe as early as Friday,” Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said, speaking Tuesday at a news conference at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD).
Duffy also claimed some airlines might consider grounding planes if the disruptions worsened — though multiple airline industry sources told TPG, late Tuesday, that they were not aware of any such plans.
Shutdown impact on air travel grows
However, the shutdown’s impact on air travel has certainly grown substantially in recent days. Travelers ran into mass disruptions this past weekend as short-staffed air traffic control facilities produced hourslong backups and helped to fuel more than 20,000 cancellations and delays on Saturday and Sunday.
Read more: Flight delayed or canceled? Here’s what to do
Air traffic controllers have been working without pay since the shutdown began, and a growing number of controllers have called out of work over the past 10 days or so.
To ease the burden, on Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration began requiring airlines to cancel 6% of flights at 40 major airports across the country — up from 4% over the weekend. Those cuts are set to reach 8% of flights by Thursday, and stretch to 10% by Friday.
That would mean thousands of daily cancellations.
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What happens when the government reopens?
It’s not clear how quickly the FAA would remove those restrictions once the government reopens.
“We’re going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel,” Duffy said Tuesday, citing safety data that, he said, showed an increase in concerning safety incidents on runways and in the air in recent weeks.
Signs of (slight) progress
There were some (slightly) positive signs on Tuesday.
While airlines canceled more than 1,200 flights, per FlightAware, that was far less than the numbers from Saturday, Sunday or Monday. More importantly, the number of canceled flights held steady: airlines made their required cuts, and things didn’t get substantially worse from there.
As meager as that sounds, that’s an improvement from the weekend.
Also, by late afternoon, the FAA had reported just four so-called “staffing triggers” at its air traffic control facilities, Duffy said. On Saturday, there were 81.
Thanksgiving travel looms
Still unclear, though: How quickly air travel could get back on track if — or when — the government reopens.
Once that happens, Duffy said, controllers would receive paychecks within 48 hours. That could be a key step to getting more workers back into control towers and flights back on track. However, plenty of uncertainty still looms after a rocky week at airports, and with the Thanksgiving travel rush now just two weeks away.
Speaking last week to TPG, a top air traffic control expert said ending the shutdown would likely help Thanksgiving travel — but stopped short of predicting a return to normal operations.
“There should be a little boomerang effect, but there’s also going to be some trickle-down,” said Margaret Wallace, professor at Florida Institute of Technology’s College of Aeronautics.
What to know about air travel and the shutdown
In the meantime, TPG has complete coverage about the shutdown, and what you can do if you have travel planned: