Department of Transportation announces 10% flight reduction amid government shutdown

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Transcript

00:00And what we're finding is that our air traffic controllers, because of the financial pressures at home, are taking side jobs.

00:08They need to put food on the table, gas in the car, pay their bills.

00:12By the way, I do not want them to take side jobs. I want them to show up for work.

00:16We have asked them to show up for work, but I'm not naive to understand that they're trying to figure out how they meet their daily obligations.

00:25And so because of that, we have seen staffing pressures throughout our airspace.

00:31Those who travel will see that we've had more delays. We've had more cancellations.

00:37We do not want to see disruptions at the FAA or here at DOT. We don't want that.

00:42But our number one priority is to make sure when you travel, you travel safely.

00:48And that's why, as the administrator and I have been talking throughout the day,

00:53his team has been working for the last 24, 36, 48 hours crunching data.

00:59We're noticing that there's additional pressure that's building in the system.

01:04And again, our priority is to make sure that you're safe.

01:08And so we're going to talk about additional measures that we are going to take

01:13that's going to reduce the risk profile in the national airspace.

01:16And I'm going to turn it over to the administrator to do that.

01:20As he walks through what that plan is going to look like, I anticipate there will be additional disruptions.

01:26There will be frustration.

01:28We are working with the airlines.

01:30They're going to work with passengers.

01:32But in the end, our sole role is to make sure that we keep this airspace as safe as possible.

01:38The administrator is going to talk about all of the tools we're going to deploy.

01:43One of them, though, is going to be that there is going to be a 10% reduction in capacity at 40 of our locations.

01:52The administrator is going to tell you that this is data-based.

01:56This is not based on what airline travels, has more flights out of what location.

02:02This is about where is the pressure and how do we alleviate the pressure.