More than 44,000 flights take off and land every day across the country, including commercial airlines, cargo carriers, private planes and military flights. That’s a lot to manage even when logistics are operating at normal capacity, and even more so when staff are not as available. Air traffic controllers and TSA screeners have been hard to come by these days due missed paychecks from the U.S. government shutdown, and the problems seem to be only getting worse.
Snapshot: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced that flight capacity will soon be reduced by 10% at 40 major airports. “We had a gut check of what is our job,” he told reporters, adding that the role is to “make the hard decisions to continue to keep the airspace safe.” According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, the new directive could reduce as many as 268,000 airline seats daily.
That could spell trouble for airlines. It’s not easy to make such far-reaching reductions to flight schedules, especially on short notice. Uncertainty among passengers can also overload customer service hotlines just weeks before Thanksgiving, which is one of the busiest travel seasons of the year. As a result, carriers have been telegraphing their strategy to deal with the capacity cuts until the government shutdown is finally resolved.
Real-time updates: United Airlines (UAL) is not changing any of its long-haul international and hub-to-hub operations, but will rather target regional flying and non-hub domestic routes. Frontier (ULCC) CEO Barry Biffle has advised travelers not to book non-refundable basic tickets, saying “chances of being stranded are high, so I would simply have a backup ticket on another airline. I’m sorry this is happening.” Meanwhile, Southwest (LUV) and American Airlines (AAL) are evaluating potential consequences and will reach out as soon as possible to customers whose travel plans might be impacted.