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By BARBARA ORTUTAY
Flight delays continued at U.S. airports Sunday amid air visitors controller shortages as the federal government shutdown entered its second month, with Newark airport in New Jersey experiencing delays of two to a few hours.
New York Metropolis’s Emergency Administration workplace stated on X that Newark delays typically ripple out to the area’s different airports.
Vacationers flying to, from or via New York “ought to anticipate schedule modifications, gate holds, and missed connections. Anybody flying at the moment ought to examine flight standing earlier than heading to the airport and anticipate longer waits,” the social media put up added.
George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Dallas Fort Price Worldwide Airport and Chicago O’Hare had been additionally seeing dozens of delays and one or two cancellations, together with main airports in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Miami, in keeping with FlightAware.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been warning that vacationers will begin to see extra flight disruptions the longer controllers go with out a paycheck.
“We work additional time to ensure the system is protected. And we’ll sluggish visitors down, you’ll see delays, we’ll have flights canceled to ensure the system is protected,” Duffy stated Sunday on CBS’S “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
He additionally stated he doesn’t plan to fireplace air visitors controllers who don’t present up for work.
“Once more once they’re making choices to feed their households, I’m not going to fireplace air visitors controllers,” Duffy stated. “They want help, they want cash, they want a paycheck. They don’t should be fired.”
Earlier in October, Duffy had warned air visitors controllers who had referred to as in sick as a substitute of working with out a paycheck in the course of the shutdown risked being fired. Even a small variety of controllers not displaying up for work is inflicting issues as a result of the FAA has a crucial scarcity of them.
The Federal Aviation Administration stated Friday on X that just about 13,000 air visitors controllers have been working with out pay for weeks.
Staffing shortages can happen each in regional management facilities that handle a number of airports and in particular person airport towers, however they don’t all the time result in flight disruptions. In line with aviation analytics agency Cirium, flight knowledge confirmed robust on-time efficiency at most main U.S. airports for the month of October regardless of remoted staffing issues all through the month.
Earlier than the shutdown, the FAA was already coping with a long-standing scarcity of about 3,000 air visitors controllers.
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