As the shutdown on USA has been going on since early October, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sounded the alarm on Sunday (09.11.2025): domestic flights, he said, “are going to be on the dropper” because of a growing shortage of air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay for weeks.
Flight delays and cancellations have already been at the center of a political standoff between Republicans and Democrats over the federal budget, with the two parties blaming each other for the chaos at airports and the extension of the US shutdown.
As of Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has formally asked airlines to gradually reduce domestic flights. Currently, international flights are not affected.
“Services will thin out right when everyone wants to travel to see their family” for Thanksgiving in late November, Duffy warned on Fox News. He said fewer and fewer controllers will show up for their shift, meaning “takeoffs and landings will be just a handful” of the usual volume. By Friday, the decline in domestic flights could reach 10%, down from about 4% today.
Already on Monday more than 1,400 flights were canceled in the US, according to the specialist website FlightAware, at a time when on a normal day about 44,000 routes are operated. Adding to the problem are the ever-growing queues at security checkpoints, and airport security staff have been working without pay for a month and are starting to thin out of their posts.
Without an agreement in Congress on the budget, the federal government has been in a state of “fiscal paralysis” (shutdown) since early October – the longest in the country’s history. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are still working unpaid, including air traffic controllers who are critical to maintaining the air network.
Speaking on CNN, Sean Duffy estimated that some inspectors “will start looking for second jobs to make ends meet,” citing Atlanta as an example, where he said “18 out of 22 inspectors didn’t show up” for duty the day before.
Democrats, for their part, accuse Donald Trump’s White House of deliberately dramatizing the situation. Their leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, spoke of “manipulation” with the aim – as he claimed – to pressure public opinion: “It has nothing to do with security. It is politics, dressed in the cloak of security,” he stressed.
For weeks, Democrats have refused to pass the budget without simultaneously extending grants for social programs that support low-wage households. “The only one playing political games is Chuck Schumer,” Duffy shot back, accusing him of perpetuating paralysis and “voting over and over to keep auditors unpaid.”
Until a compromise is reached, American travelers are footing the bill, stuck on the ground during one of the busiest times of the year for aviation.