FAA announces air traffic reduction in 40 'high volume' markets during government shutdown

WCCO-AM / 830 WCCO

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that it will reduce air traffic by 10% across 40 “high-volume” markets beginning Friday morning to maintain safety during the ongoing government shutdown.

Transcript

00:00...metrics as it was prior to the lapse.

00:10But as we dig deeper into the data, what we find are issues of fatigue that our flight

00:17controllers are experiencing.

00:20And we see that through voluntary safety disclosure reports coming in from commercial air transport

00:25pilots.

00:26That data has allowed us to focus not on the NAS as a whole, but on specific markets

00:31where we're seeing some of these reports come to us.

00:34And as we slice the data more granularly, we are seeing pressures build in a way that

00:39we don't feel will, if we allow it to go unchecked, will allow us to continue to tell the public

00:45that we operate the safest airline system in the world.

00:49And we're not going to react to that, and we intend to be proactive.

00:53So we're going to implement measures with our commercial airline industry partners, but

00:58this is going to go beyond commercial airspace.

01:01It's going to include restrictions on space launches, restrictions on VFR traffic in certain

01:07markets that have continued FAA controller staffing triggers, and a host of other countermeasures,

01:13if you will, that will give us the highest level of comfort that we're maintaining the

01:17safest aviation space in the world.

01:20And that's the mission.

01:22But we do recognize that the controllers have been working fastidiously for the last five

01:27weeks with this huge burden over their head of lack of compensation.

01:32And we are starting to see some evidence that that fatigue is building in the system in ways

01:37that we feel we need to work towards relieving some of that pressure.

01:42So, again, as the Secretary said, we've identified 40 high-traffic environment markets.

01:48We'll be happy to share that later.

01:50We have decided that a 10% reduction in scheduled capacity would be appropriate to, again, continue

01:57to take the pressure off of our controllers.

02:00And as we continue to see staffing triggers, there will be additional measures that will be

02:04taken in those specific markets.

02:06Again, I think it's a holistic plan.

02:08I really appreciate the men and women to take any questions that you have.

02:13I do want to reiterate, this is proactive.

02:17We don't want to find ourselves in a situation, I think the administrator said, we don't want

02:20the horse out of the barn and then look back and say there were issues we could have taken

02:26that we didn't.

02:27So we are going to proactively make decisions that keep the airspace safe.

02:32With that, we're happy to take any questions.

02:36So they will have gone a month without any pay.

02:39And what we're finding is that our air traffic controllers, because of the financial pressures

02:44at home, are taking side jobs.

02:47They need to put food on the table, gas in the car, pay their bills.

02:51By the way, I do not want them to take side jobs.

02:54I want them to show up for work.

02:55We have asked them to show up for work, but I'm not naive to understand that they're trying

03:01to figure out how they meet their daily obligations.

03:05And so because of that, we have seen staffing pressures throughout our airspace.

03:11Those who travel will see that we've had more delays.

03:14We've had more cancellations.

03:16We do not want to see disruptions at the FAA or here at DOT.

03:20We don't want that.

03:22But our number one priority is to make sure when you travel, you travel safely.

03:26And that's why, as the equipment, that's because of the well-trained air traffic controllers

03:32that we have operating the national airspace.

03:35We received $12.5 billion from the .

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