ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0The longest government shutdown in U.S. History has reached Day 38 as flight reductions went into place Friday in an attempt to relieve pressure on unpaid air traffic controllers.<\/p>\n
Locally, the Orlando International Airport has seen hundreds of delays and dozens of cancellations, with the numbers expected to increase as the shutdown continues.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
FAA flight reductions began Friday as 4% of flights in and out of 40 high-volume airports were cut nationwide
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Orlando saw more than 270 delays and 30 cancellations Friday
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Some travelers say the delays are a small inconvenience\u00a0when it comes to the safety of everyone and the government shutdown ending
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The number of flights reduced will ramp up to 6% by Nov. 11, 8% by Nov. 13, and up to 10% by Nov. 14<\/p>\n
The flight information displays showed\u00a0a lot more green Friday evening than earlier in the day when a lot of the delays and cancellations took place.<\/p>\n
But as usual, the airport saw travelers from all over, with some just trying to make their way back home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI flew in two weeks ago and now here I am Friday waiting for my flight,” said New York Native Cathy Featherstone. “I got to the airport at 6 p.m. waiting for my 8 p.m. flight and it got delayed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Featherstone is flying back to New York and says she was in Central Florida for a few weeks to visit her mother.<\/p>\n
Because of the government shutdown, more than 270 flights were delayed and more than 30 flights were canceled in Orlando Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI anticipated it. I didn\u2019t know whether it would be delayed or not,” Featherstone said. “I heard all of the stories about how all of these flights at 40 airports around the country, and I didn\u2019t know if mine was going to be impacted, and luckily it\u2019s only 50 minutes delay but hopefully there\u2019s not a delay on top of that delay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were supposed to fly out at around 10 p.m. but it got pushed back to about 11,” said Ruby Gilmour and Logan Snow. “They were saying earlier that the flight hadn\u2019t even left Pittsburgh, or wherever it was coming from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gilmour and Snow came to the Sunshine State from Cleveland to check out the theme parks.<\/p>\n
They said they got to the airport seven hours early to avoid any other issues.<\/p>\n
And while all of the delays are inconvenient, they say they understand why reductions were made.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s about safety and it\u2019s necessary, then let\u2019s not sacrifice safety,” Gilmour said.<\/p>\n
And for Featherstone, she just hopes that these impacts lead to actually change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to think that I want to see the bigger picture and want to think about others more than just myself,” Featherstone said. “And I will take this delay in hopes that maybe there will be some pressure from other places.\u201d<\/p>\n
Information from the FAA shows that 4% of flights were reduced starting Friday, and that number will ramp up to 6% by Nov. 11, 8% by Nov. 13 and up to 10% by Nov. 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0The longest government shutdown in U.S. History has reached Day 38 as flight reductions went into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[11687,11902,274,14105,28,115,1335,139,141,140,278,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-38713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-air-travel","9":"tag-app-air-travel","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-brandon-spencer","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-orange-county","15":"tag-orlando","16":"tag-orlando-headlines","17":"tag-orlando-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}