The Government Shutdown Is Already Leading to Thousands of Flight Delays

The government shutdown is now officially one week old, and it is already causing disruptions to air traffic.

Nashville Airport and the Chicago O’Hare Airport both faced major delays on Tuesday due to a shortage of air traffic controllers.

Air traffic controllers are the backbone of safe air travel. However, they are also tired and overworked due to a shortage that has been ongoing for years and is about to worsen significantly due to the government shutdown.

In the event of a government shutdown, thousands of personnel across the federal government are furloughed. Air traffic controllers are considered essential to the protection of life and property, so they are required to get back to work, albeit without pay or additional support staff.

The workers will get a reduced paycheck this Friday, and if the shutdown continues, their next scheduled payment will not come. The controllers are currently already working mandatory overtime, clocking in for 10 hours a day, six days a week, according to the labor union National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).

The situation has historically led many air traffic controllers to call in sick in the event of a shutdown. That was the case during the last government shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019, too. It eventually forced Washington to end the shutdown when the absence of ten air traffic controllers completely grounded flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and caused widespread flight disruptions nationwide.

Is a similar fate playing out this time around? We will have to wait and see. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a press conference on Monday that staffing levels at some facilities had been cut in half since the shutdown started. Meanwhile, staffing shortage-induced delays are already happening.

There were a total of 3,778 delays within, into, or out of the U.S. on Tuesday, and 6,514 on Monday.

Nashville International Airport’s air traffic control tower was operating at limited capacity on Tuesday, which caused a ground delay for several hours as flights were reduced. The few flights that were allowed in had to contact a control center in nearby Memphis.

According to an FAA advisory from Tuesday evening, there were also staffing shortages in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and Dallas.

On Monday, hundreds of flights were delayed due to staffing shortages in air traffic control towers in Philadelphia, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Burbank.

In Burbank’s Hollywood Airport, one of the air traffic control towers had to close for several hours due to a lack of controllers.

“Thanks, @realDonaldTrump! Burbank Airport has ZERO air traffic controllers from 4:15pm to 10pm today because of YOUR government shutdown,” California governor Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

An FAA advisory from Wednesday shows no expected staffing shortages for the day, as of 10 AM. There was short staffing earlier in the morning at the Philadelphia Area C control center, which handles flights into various airports, including Newark Liberty International Airport.

It’s been a tense year in American air travel.

2025 started with the fatal collision of an American Airlines flight with an Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C. airspace that took the lives of 67 people. A couple of months after that, Newark Airport experienced a terrifying outage that saw air traffic controllers lose all communications with planes flying in and out of the airport for about 90 seconds.

There have been many other smaller incidents since, as travelers and air traffic controllers are both on edge.

NATCA President Nick Daniels told ABC News on Tuesday that short-staffing-induced delays have become more commonplace in the system.

“In the last nine months, there have been 1,058 occurrences where one of our facilities has had to shut down, either temporarily for a few hours or for a shift,” Daniels said. “The shutdown absolutely doesn’t help it, but this is something that we deal with day in and day out.”