The U.S. will reduce flight capacity by 10 per cent at 40 of the nation’s airports starting Friday morning amid growing impacts from an air traffic controller shortage made worse by the U.S. government shutdown, officials said Wednesday.
The reduction stands to impact thousands of flights nationwide as well as international flights entering the U.S.
The shutdown has forced 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers to work without pay, leading to tens of thousands of flight delays and cancellations.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the move was necessary to maintain safety in the skies and at airports, adding “high volume” markets will be targeted.
“We thought 10 per cent was the right number based on the pressure we’ve been seeing,” Duffy told reporters at a press conference.
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U.S. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency will release a list of the affected airports on Thursday.
“We want to do this in an organized way,” he said.
“We’re going to ask the airlines to work with us collaboratively to reduce their schedules … so we’re going to look for a radical reduction across these 40 markets over the next 48 hours.”
Bedford added the agency had a duty to not “ignore” the growing impacts and take proactive measures to ensure the system isn’t further strained.
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“The early indicators are telling us we can take action today to prevent things from deteriorating,” he said.
Duffy had warned on Tuesday that if the federal government shutdown continued another week, it could lead to “mass chaos” and force him to close some of the national airspace to air traffic.
Airlines have repeatedly urged an end to the shutdown, citing aviation safety risks.
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There have already been numerous delays at airports across the country — sometimes hours long — because the FAA slows down or stops traffic temporarily anytime it is short on controllers. Last weekend saw some of the worst staffing shortages, and on Sunday, flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey were delayed for several hours.
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The White House said Tuesday that over 5,000 flights were delayed nationwide on Sunday alone.
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Duffy and Bedford both stressed Wednesday that air travel remains safe and that moves to limit capacity, along with past ground stops and delays at certain airports, maintain that safety.
Duffy said it will take time to restore pay and bring back air traffic controllers in a way that allows airports to return to normal operations, even if Congress reaches a deal this week to end the shutdown.
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Republicans and Democrats are in a standoff over government funding and health-care premiums that has stretched 36 days, making this shutdown the longest in U.S. history.
Canadian airlines including Air Canada and WestJet have told Global News they are monitoring the situation in the U.S. but have downplayed or denied any impacts to their operations.
The airlines did not have an immediate reaction to Wednesday’s announcement.
Hundreds of flights carry travellers between Canada and the U.S. every day, but demand has dipped since January after U.S. President Donald Trump launched a global trade war and raised threats about making Canada the “51st state.”
Statistics Canada reported Monday that in September, 1.2 million passengers boarded flights from Canada to the U.S., down 10.5 per cent than the same month in 2024.
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It marks the ninth straight month of declining air travel to the U.S., while cross-border trips overall have also fallen this year.
In a third-quarter earnings call Wednesday, Air Canada’s chief commercial officer Mark Galardo said the airline “mitigated the exposure to reduced demand between Canada and the U.S.” by expanding flights domestically and to Europe.
“The transborder sector remains stable, albeit at lower levels,” he said of Canada-U.S. travel.
—With files from the Canadian Press, Reuters and the Associated Press
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