Washington
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The Department of Transportation may close some parts of US airspace if sufficient air traffic controllers don’t present as much as work, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy mentioned Tuesday.
“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” Duffy mentioned at a information convention on Tuesday. “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 cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”
Controllers acquired a partial paycheck early in the shutdown, and final week missed one fully. On Thursday, Duffy mentioned, controllers can be despatched one other paystub that reads $0. He mentioned many controllers can’t go with out two paychecks.
Controllers, like Transportation Security Administration employees, are important staff and are required to work throughout federal authorities shutdowns regardless of not being paid. This previous week, TSA and Federal Aviation Administration staff not displaying up for work brought about huge safety wait occasions in Houston and delays at airports throughout the nation.
“I can’t just go find money and pay air traffic controllers,” Duffy mentioned. “That’s not the way our constitution works and our government works.”
Earlier this 12 months, the DOT employed 2,000 controllers to try to deal with a decades-long scarcity, however Duffy mentioned the shutdown “will have an impact.”
“These young people have a choice to make: do they want to go into a profession where they can have a shutdown and they cannot be paid? That’s affected our pipeline,” he mentioned.
Duffy additionally reaffirmed if the airspace wasn’t secure, the DOT would “shut it down.” He mentioned some controllers may work two positions versus one as a result of of the callouts, which is allowed and secure, however does pose a higher threat.
“We delay flights, we cancel or tell airlines to cancel flights if we don’t have enough controllers to effectively and safely manage our skies, Duffy said. “With this shutdown, it would be dishonest to say that more risk is not injected into the system. There is more risk in the system.”
While most aviation experts agree it’s secure to fly throughout the shutdown, the union representing air traffic controllers, which has pushed laborious for the authorities to reopen, says every day it stays closed, the much less secure the system will get.
“Every single day that this goes on, tomorrow is now less safe than today,” mentioned Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, on NCS News Central Monday. “We’re supposed to go to work and be 100%, 100% of the time. I’m going to work right now, and I’m thinking about, ‘how do I pay my rent?’”
TSA employees beneath the Department of Homeland Security are additionally going with out pay and a few of them are usually not displaying up for work.
Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport warned vacationers of as much as three-hour waits for safety screening this week. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport warned of lengthy traces final month brought on by the scarcity of employees.
In an announcement to NCS, Delta Air Lines, whose largest hub is Atlanta, mentioned it’s using a “years-long partnership” with TSA to help employees close to screening checkpoints and “free up” licensed TSA screeners to course of passengers.
“Delta Air Lines implores Congress to immediately pass a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government so that our air traffic controllers, TSA and CBP officers charged with the safety and efficiency of our national airspace can collect the paychecks they deserve,” a Delta spokesperson mentioned.