Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that if the government shutdown continues into next week, the Department of Transportation (DOT) may be forced to “close certain parts of the airspace.”
During a press conference on Tuesday, Duffy explained that the longer the government shutdown goes on, Americans working jobs where they have not received a paycheck during the shutdown are “forced to make decisions and choices” about whether to continue working in their current jobs or get a different job.
“The longer this goes on, every day these hardworking Americans have bills they have to pay, and they’re being forced to make decisions and choices,” he said. “Do they go to work as an air traffic controller, or do they have to find a different job to get resources, money, to put food on their table, to put gas in their car. As every day goes by, I think the problem is going to only get worse, not better.”
Duffy went on to add that “this Thursday,” air traffic controllers will get an “e-mail paystub that’ll show what their next payment is going to be,” adding that the paystubs will show “a big fat zero.” Duffy shared that air controllers expressed that a lot of them “can navigate missing one paycheck,” though none of them “can manage missing two paychecks.”
“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” Duffy said. “You will see mass flight delays, you’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just can not manage it, because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”
Duffy’s warning comes after United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby on October 30 called for a clean continuing resolution (CR) to be passed so that the government could be re-opened.
During a press conference Kirby said:
It’s been 30 days, and while I don’t have a position on which partisan side, and how things should be settled with healthcare, it has been 30 days. I also think it is time to pass a clean CR — use that as the opportunity to get into a room behind closed doors and negotiate hard on the real and substantive issues that the American people want our politicians on both sides of the aisle to solve.
As a result of the shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had to halt flights to locations such as Los Angeles International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport as a result of staffing shortages of air traffic controllers.
