In May, The Verge reported that the US aviation system was so fragile that “the smallest disruption can throw the entire system into chaos.” That disruption arrived on October 1st, when the federal government shut down over a budget dispute. Chaos has indeed ensued.
More than 6,000 flights are being delayed every day, nearly twice the historical average for October according to Department of Transportation statistics. The TSA has warned of longer security lines at airports and has stopped updating real-time checkpoint information on its MyTSA app. Some major airports have even been forced to operate without air traffic control for hours at a time.
Pay, or lack thereof, is the reason behind the disruption. When the federal budget ran out on October 1st, more than half a million employees were immediately furloughed. But the nation’s 75,000 air traffic controllers and frontline TSA officers are “excepted” employees who must come into work regardless of the circumstances.
In a statement posted on X, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy attempted to reassure his employees.
“Controllers who show up to work will get paid,” he said, “Just not on time.”
That won’t work for many furloughed employees who can’t afford to work on an indefinite IOU, said Johnny Jones. He’s been with the TSA since 2002 and represents TSA employees within the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union in the country.
“Our number one problem is the uncertainty surrounding how long this is going to go on, and how long you’re going to have to come to work without pay,” he told The Verge. “You’re living off of what you’ve been able to save. And you had maybe a week, two weeks’ notice.”
There’s little that federal workers can do to openly advocate for the pay they’re owed. Air traffic controllers know this lesson particularly well. In 1981, 13,000 of them went on strike to ask for better pay, adequate staffing, and general safety improvements. Citing a 1966 law that forbids federal employees from going on strike, President Ronald Reagan not only fired the striking workers — he also barred them from holding another federal job for life. That one action stopped the strike, but also created the air traffic control crisis that persists to this day.
Sick leave is one of the only levers that essential workers can pull. Per their contracts, air traffic controllers and TSA employees can use their banked sick leave with few restrictions as long as they don’t call out for more than three days in a row.
Prior to the shutdown, some controllers used their sick leave to give themselves a temporary break from their grueling schedules, which can require them to work 10 hours a day, six days a week. Others used it to deal with the trauma of equipment outages that instantly put dozens of commercial flights at risk of collision. Now, they are using sick leave to reduce the burden of working at a job that can’t pay them for the foreseeable future.
On October 6th, Duffy held a press conference in front of the baggage claim at Newark Airport to address the staffing situation.
“We’re tracking sick calls, sick leave,” he said. “We’ve had slight tick ups in certain areas, and we are managing that.”
Even a “slight tick up” can have huge impacts across the country.
That same day, 11 major air traffic facilities announced that staffing levels would fall so low that they could not safely handle their planned volume of traffic. Hollywood Burbank Airport had no air traffic controllers on duty for almost six hours; pilots taking off or landing at the airport had to coordinate with each other over a shared radio frequency.
Since then, staffing shortages have affected half of the nation’s en route facilities, a third of its arrival and departure facilities, and tower operations at Austin, Chicago O’Hare, Denver, Phoenix, and Reagan airports. On Friday, October 10th, the start of the Columbus Day holiday weekend, more than 7,700 flights were delayed across the country — or almost one out of every five scheduled flights, according to FlightAware.
In an interview with Fox Business, Duffy threatened to fire the “small subset of controllers that don’t show up to work … the problem children.” And the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), the union representing most US air traffic controllers, warned its members not to engage in “a coordinated activity that negatively affects the capacity of the NAS [national airspace system].”
But this isn’t coordinated activity. It’s individuals using what tools they have to protect themselves against unnecessary exploitation.
The impact on airport security is harder to quantify. Since October 9th, the TSA has posted daily wait time data on X, something it has never done before. Still, the agency doesn’t keep accurate historical records, so it’s impossible to put these numbers in context. We do know that thousands more TSA employees have called in sick than usual, since many of them can’t afford to come in to a job that won’t pay them.
The government shutdown during the first Trump administration lasted 35 days, the longest in US history. So far, the current one will last at least 19 days, as Congress is not scheduled to come back from recess until October 19th. Until it ends, the situation for travelers — and for those essential workers who keep America flying — will only get worse.
“People can’t come to work if they’re not making money. Daycares don’t take IOUs, grocery stores don’t take IOUs, gas stations don’t take IOUs,” said Johnny Jones. “If this goes on for 30, 40 days, the airport is going to be a ghost town.”
