Airports on the East Coast were hit with increasing delays this morning as the shutdown’s impacts begin to slow the aviation system, a situation aviation workers have warned about for weeks.
Departures from Philadelphia and Newark were delayed by more than an hour, and a traffic management program significantly slowed traffic at LaGuardia in New York.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it has “experienced a slight increase in sick leave” at two of its air traffic control facilities, which is impacting New York and Florida.
“As with severe storms, we will adjust operations to a safe rate to match available controller resources,” according to an agency statement. “We’ve mitigated the impact by augmenting staffing, rerouting traffic, and increasing spacing between aircraft as needed. The results have been minimal impacts to efficiency while maintaining consistent levels of safety in the national airspace system.”
Air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks because of the government shutdown, and their union has warned in recent weeks that there could be a breaking point because of this weeks missed paychecks.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine