ABC News reports all three of D.C.’s local airports — BWI Marshall Airport, Reagan National and Dulles International — will be impacted by the FAA’s air traffic reduction. CBS News’ Kris Van Cleave tells WTOP what travelers should expect.

All three of D.C.’s local airports — BWI Marshall, Reagan National and Dulles International — are on a list of airports that will see a reduction of flights starting Friday, according to a list obtained by ABC News.  

The report comes after the Federal Aviation Administration said it will reduce air traffic by 10% across 40 “high-volume markets” as the government shutdown continues.

Travel delays have been adding up as air traffic controllers have continued to work without pay during the shutdown. The FAA said the reduction will help maintain safety and avoid any major issues, including unstaffed air traffic control towers.

At a press conference Wednesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said there’s been an increase in air traffic controllers calling out sick since the shutdown started, leading to staffing shortages and delays. Duffy said they’re offering bonuses to air traffic controllers.

“What we’re finding is, our air traffic controllers, because of the financial pressures at home, are taking side jobs. … I do not want them to take side jobs, I want them to show up for work. We 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,” he said.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter out to employees that the airline will be making rolling updates to its schedule in order to give travelers “several days’ advance notice” to changes.

He added that the airline’s “long-haul international flying and our hub-to-hub flying will not be impacted by this schedule reduction direction from the FAA,” and instead, they’ll be making the cuts to its domestic flights.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said a list of the targeted markets will be released Thursday.

CBS News Senior Transportation Correspondent Kris Van Cleave joined WTOP anchors Anne Kramer and Shawn Anderson to discuss how this might affect the three major airports around the D.C. region.

Read or listen to the interview below.

CBS News Senior Transportation Correspondent Kris Van Cleave joined WTOP’s Shawn Anderson and Anne Kramer to discuss the reduced air traffic

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Shawn Anderson:

Kris, can you break this all down for us?

Kris Van Cleave:

This is likely going to be something that you will see impacts at the three Washington, D.C.-area airports. We’re talking about the 40 high volume areas. They weren’t specific as to which markets those were in yet, but it is safe to assume that the nation’s 30 busiest airports are going to be impacted by this, whether directly or because a flight that was originating there gets canceled going somewhere else.

So this is going to impact people across the country, because you’re looking at anywhere from maybe 2,000 to 4,000 flights a day that the airlines were given 48 hours to figure out which ones to cancel.

Shawn Anderson:

Elaborate on what reasons the FAA is giving for this decision.

Kris Van Cleave:

So the FAA says they were looking at their internal data, and that they have been looking at things like this a lot closer since the crash in January between the American Airlines regional jet and that Army Black Hawk helicopter as it was about to land at DCA.

They say that, as they proactively look through the data, they were seeing an increase in reports of the controllers who were on the job feeling pressured, stressed and fatigued. And they feel in order to bring the stress level and the fatigue level down on the controllers that are going to work every day — remember, they’re working without pay — they needed to reduce the volume of flights.

Because you also have controllers that are calling in sick. Those sick calls have surged, so the folks on the job are taking on more work every day as they try to counterbalance the staffing issues at air traffic control with the 45,000 or so daily scheduled flights.

Anne Kramer:

You can look anywhere on social media and see posts from flyers, from people warning, even some of the airports themselves, saying, “Look, TSA check lines may be three hours long.” Give us some perspective. What is this going to do to people trying to get a flight on Friday?

Kris Van Cleave:

What this shutdown has done almost from day one, is inject a high level of uncertainty into everyone’s travels. I’ve likened it to “shutdown delay roulette,” because we know they’re going to happen. We don’t know when, we don’t know where, and we don’t know how bad. So it’s been really hard to predict.

No one had on their bingo card that the Houston airport, that Bush Intercontinental, would have three-hour long security lines on Sunday, but it happened because their TSA staffing levels plummeted.

We’ve seen the Burbank Airport in California, remember, it went to ATC zero. No one was in the control tower for a point. The next shift, it was staffed OK.

So there’s a level of uncertainty here, and now you’re adding to that, because people who are planning to travel on Friday will likely get a notice from their airline that their flight’s been canceled. Maybe they can be rebooked at a time that works, maybe not; but you’re talking about tens of thousands of people that are about to have their travel disrupted.

And it’s not just going to be Friday, it’s going to be every day until the FAA feels the staffing level, the pressure level and the exhaustion level of their controllers goes back to an acceptable level to increase the traffic back to normal.

Shawn Anderson:

Is there any sense that particular airlines might be more affected than others, and what are the airlines saying about this at this point?

Kris Van Cleave:

Our understanding is the airlines learned about this plan about the same time we did. So they are scrambling. They’re meeting with the Department of Transportation and the White House, but they are going to have to scramble now to make some operational changes.

DOT’s hope was to spread out the cancellation so that no one city pair or no one airline suffered more or unfairly. But in the top 30 busiest airports, airlines have hubs. In Phoenix, it’s American and Southwest. In D.C., it’s American at DCA. It’s United at Dulles. It’s Southwest at BWI. At those airports, it will likely be an outsized effect of the airlines that have the largest presence.

Anne Kramer:

Kris, we have heard from the president and from his aides that the major airlines are supporting him and supporting the effort to try and reopen the government from the president’s side of things. What have you been hearing from airlines executives, if anything?

Kris Van Cleave:

The airlines want the government back open. They want air traffic controllers paid. They want TSA officers paid. They want people back on the job so that they can run a dependable schedule.

It costs airlines thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, to cancel flights. And if you talk about gridlocking the system, airlines will start burning millions of dollars if their planes aren’t flying. So certainly, from an airline perspective, it’s good business. It’s important for their bottom line. It’s important for safety that the government reopen.

The airlines have said they’ve already seen a pullback in bookings. They just today said they expect the busiest Thanksgiving ever, and that’s a big question mark. We’re three weeks away, three weeks away from the Thanksgiving travel period, and you have the FAA talking about shaving 10% of flights out of the schedule because of staffing. Well, those pressures are only going to get more intense the longer this goes on.

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