Atlanta’s airport, the busiest flight hub in the country, is struggling to stay afloat during the longest government shutdown in US history.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that “18 of 22 controllers in Atlanta didn’t show up” for work on Saturday.
“We had 81 staffing triggers throughout the national airspace yesterday — that means controllers weren’t coming to work,” Duffy said. “To answer your question, it’s only going to get worse.”
He said that two weeks before Thanksgiving, air travel would be “reduced to a trickle” and people who want to go home to see their families might not be able to.
“Many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly, if this thing doesn’t open back up,” Duffy added.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was the busiest airport in the world in 2024, serving more than 108 million passengers, according to a report by the Airports Council International.
Hundreds of flights have been canceled across the country daily since Friday, after Duffy announced that he would be temporarily reducing flight traffic by 10% at 40 high-traffic airports in the US.
Per the flight tracking website FlightRadar24, over the weekend, there were about 4,500 flight cancellations and more than 17,800 flight delays, within, into, or out of the United States.
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The FAA told Business Insider in a statement that Duffy and the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, had reduced air traffic as a “proactive” step to keep the national airspace safe during the shutdown.
The FAA added that controllers working without pay “has resulted in increased reports of strain on the system from both pilots and air traffic controllers.”
According to a shutdown plan released by the Department of Transportation on September 30, 13,000 air traffic controllers are having to work without pay during the shutdown.
On Sunday night, lawmakers got one step closer to ending the shutdown, with the majority of the Senate voting to advance a spending package that would reopen the government.
The shutdown will not end immediately — the measure now has to be debated in the Senate and then approved by the House of Representatives.
