WASHINGTON — Airlines have begun canceling hundreds of flights to comply with an order from the Federal Aviation Administration, with the goal of gradually reducing air traffic at dozens of the nation's busiest airports by 10%.
The agency says the move is necessary to keep the airspace safe as it deals with persistent staffing shortages of air traffic controllers, who are required to work without pay during the government shutdown.
"We'll see probably more people on less flights, which means less pressure on controllers," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said to reporters at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Friday.
But there are still many unanswered questions about this planned reduction in air traffic, and what it will mean for airlines and travelers.
How will the FAA's plan to reduce flights work?
In an order released late Thursday, the FAA listed the 40 major airports that it has targeted for reductions in air traffic. The list includes major airline hubs in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles and in Newark, N.J.
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Flights between those major airports and many other mid-sized and regional airports will also be affected as airlines pare back their schedules. For example, United Airlines has published a full list of flights it is cancelling through the weekend, with many smaller markets like Moline, Ill.; Shreveport, La.; Grand Junction, Colo.; and Fresno, Calif., losing flights.
The FAA's plan requires airlines to phase in these cuts gradually, starting with 4% of flights through the weekend and gradually building up to 10% by next Friday. Airlines have some discretion to decide how they're going to hit those targets, so it's likely they will seek to protect their most popular and profitable routes while cutting back on regional flights.
The order to reduce traffic applies only to domestic flights, not to international routes. The FAA's plan also imposes temporary limits on commercial space launches, which can place extra demands on air traffic controllers.
How big of an impact will this have on airline operations?
The major airlines are trying to downplay the impact of the flight reductions.
Delta Air Lines says it plans to operate "the vast majority of our schedule," and to continue flying to all of the markets the airline serves, "though frequency may be affected."
David Seymour, the chief operating officer at American Airlines, said in a letter to the company's employees that "the majority of our reductions involve our regional flying schedule. And, to ensure we can reaccommodate as many customers as possible, we've also focused the reductions on higher-frequency markets."
An executive at United Airlines says the airline will also try to minimize the impact on customers.
"The good point, if there is a silver lining here, is that we are not in peak travel period now," said David Kinzelman, a senior vice president for airport operations at United, so the airline has more seats available for customers whose flights are cancelled.
In an interview with NPR's All Things Considered on Thursday, Kinzelman said airlines are used to adjusting their operations quickly.
"We have service disruptions frequently in the airline business. They could be storms. They could be staffing triggers," Kinzelman said. "So we've got a good playbook. Just to put it in perspective, the impact here is about what we would expect from a medium-sized storm."
But this situation is different from a line of thunderstorms that affects only one or two parts of the country. There is no exact precedent for a reduction in air traffic across so many airports at the same time, so it's difficult to predict how it will go.
How did the FAA pick which airports to target?
It's not entirely clear, though FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford has said the process was based on data, including internal safety metrics and voluntary reports from commercial air transport pilots.
"We're trying to be prescriptive, surgical," Bedford said during a press conference announcing the reductions on Wednesday. "Put the relief where the relief will do the most good."
The list of 40 major airports includes some that have experienced persistent shortages of air traffic controllers during the shutdown, including Newark Liberty International Airport and Reagan Washington National Airport.
But surprisingly, the list does not include airports in Austin and Nashville, which have seen frequent shortages of controllers both before and during the shutdown.
Some of the airports that do appear on the list are also puzzling — perhaps none more so than Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Alaska. The airport is a major hub for cargo arriving from Asia. But the FAA has not reported significant staffing shortages of air traffic controllers at the airport or other facilities that manage traffic around it during the shutdown.
Why is the FAA doing this right now?
The FAA says the move is necessary to keep the system as safe while fewer air traffic controllers are showing up to work during the government shutdown.
Those controllers are required to work without pay until the shutdown ends, and they're under growing pressure as they face the prospect of missing a second full paycheck. Some have taken on second jobs, and many are calling out sick.
Despite that, the air traffic control system had been working fairly well during the shutdown — until last weekend, when the FAA reported extensive staffing shortages at dozens of facilities across the country.
But the Trump administration's critics say the move appears to be about more than just safety.
"This is a political move by the Trump administration to try to force Democrats to accede to their budget and priorities which cut health care and nutritional benefits from seniors, children and people with disabilities," said U.S. Representative Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., a former top Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees aviation. Still, Cohen called the move "prudent" given the added stress on air traffic controllers.
The head of Airlines for America, an airline industry trade group, rejected the argument that optics or politics are driving the flight reductions.
"It's all in the name of safety," said Chris Sununu, the group's president and CEO and a former Republican governor of New Hampshire, in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition. "The airlines are at risk of losing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. They're not doing that just for political moves. They're doing that because they know safety is absolutely paramount, pressures are absolutely growing."
How are travelers handling the uncertainty about their flights?
Many are understandably worried about their upcoming travel plans.
NPR member station WABE spoke to Ellen Silva, who had just arrived in Atlanta on Thursday. She's supposed to fly back to Baltimore on Tuesday, but she's concerned about what could happen if that flight is cancelled.
"I would miss work and I'd have some very unhappy people that I work for because they depend on me so they can travel, and if I'm not there they can't leave," Silva said.
Patricia Andeweg was supposed to fly from Boston Logan International Airport to Australia to celebrate her 90th birthday with family this week. But thanks to a series of delays and shutdown-induced cancellations, she missed her connecting flight.
"I'm missing my birthday," Andeweg told member station GBH on Friday. "But on the other hand, I met so many helpful people, right, left and center. I call it the journey to nowhere."
Jeremy Siegel from member station GBH in Boston and Marlon Hyde at WABE in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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