Haphazard flight cancellations are hurting an already strained travel industry, Cranky Flier says

Some U.S. Senate Democrats defected over the weekend, striking a deal with Republicans to reopen the government with the promise of a future vote on health care, which they’d been holding out for.

The group of eight Democratic defectors did not include Arizona’s two senators, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego.

The deal still faces several hurdles before it can be passed but, right now, it looks like the end of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history could be near.

Due to the government shutdown, flights are being cancelled and delayed all over the country. The shutdown has hit air traffic controllers especially hard.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced last week it would cut 10% of flights at the nation’s 40 busiest airports to reduce pressure on them. Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix is one of the 40, and the number of cancelled and delayed flights is on the rise. At last check, it’s at 97 cancelled flights and 403 delayed flights.

As he wrote in his blog Cranky Flier, airline connoisseur Brett Snyder is angry about it all.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so the FAA made this announcement last week, and we've seen delayed canceled flights kind of racking up all around the country. What's it look like now? How bad has it gotten?

BRETT SNYDER: Well, we're not even fully ramped up at this point. It only started on Friday, and they're still technically at the 4% number, and it's supposed to go up to 10%. Hopefully that'll change if the government ends up reopening, though.

GILGER: So the delayed flights, the canceled flights we're seeing now is only just a chunk of this 10% cut that the FAA ordered?

SNYDER: Yeah. For the cancellations, they gave them a period of time to try and ramp up to it. Now, the problem is that we've seen very significant problems with staffing in air traffic centers all across the country. So there have been additional cancellations and issues on any given day depending upon who's available to do the job.

GILGER: Yeah. So let's talk more about that, because there's a real problem when it comes to air traffic controllers, and there kind of was a problem before the shutdown even began, right?

SNYDER: Yeah, that's right. There's been a shortage for some time. Air traffic controllers have a mandatory retirement age that's lower than most because it's a very difficult job. And so you have controllers that are reaching retirement age, and there hasn't been enough in the pipeline to replace all those.

GILGER: So they're tired. They haven't been paid fully or at all in the last several pay cycles. Problems with air traffic controllers, Brett, can lead to real safety issues, right? This is important, as you're getting at there.

SNYDER: Well, they could lead to safety issues. I think the idea here is that the system is built in a way that if there aren't enough controllers, then it just requires canceling flights and to avoid those safety issues. But what I think this order did from the FAA is that it was a very broad order, very different than in specific instances.

I know in Phoenix, there were some staffing shortages before this order came out, and there were significant cancellations and delays to deal with that. But this is, I guess, an attempt to be more proactive by pre-canceling all these flights. I just, I don't know that it's actually going to have that helpful impact.

Brett Snyder

GILGER: Right. So let's talk about your take on this. You, it sounds like, take issue with how this 10% cut was rolled out and sort of who it's going to impact most.

SNYDER: Yeah, I find it actually fairly strange. They took 33 of the top 40 airports for scheduled flights. Then they took six airports that are big cargo hubs and one for private jets — Teterboro, outside New York. And it's rather strange to me certain airports that got left out, like Nashville for example, which yesterday had a 63-minute delay due to staffing shortages. So I don't know why one was left out and others were not.

But the problem is that you just don't know. These controllers — as you said, very stressed, overworked — you don't know on any given day who is going to call out and who will show up. And so I think there are a lot of flights that have been canceled that probably didn't need to be. And then there are other airports that have more severe issues where they need to cancel more.

GILGER: Yeah, what about the airlines, Brett? How hard is all of this hitting them, especially as they're ordered to make cuts?

SNYDER: Oh, this has been a real challenge for them. The final order on the cancellations from the FAA didn't even come out until Thursday evening. And it had to be implemented by Friday morning. Airlines are very complex networks. They have aircraft that need to be routed properly. They need to end up in maintenance bases to get the correct work done.

They need to schedule other crews to be in the right place at the right time. These don't happen that quickly, usually. And so they've been scrambling and working very hard to make this come together.

GILGER: And because of that kind of int system you're describing there, like this has massive ripple effects, I'm sure.

SNYDER: Oh, absolutely. And on top of that, there was snow in the upper Midwest over the weekend, and there's some rain elsewhere. So they're already dealing with the regular irregular operations, as they call them. And then to have this on top of that, it just makes this incredible puzzle. So go thank your fellow airline employees if you see them out there.

GILGER: So let me ask you lastly here, Brett. I mean, it looks like this morning lawmakers might have reached a deal to maybe reopen the government at some point here in the near future. But I mean, is it damage done?

SNYDER: Well, we don't really know how long it'll take to unwind from this. The FAA had said it should be a seven day period in advance that you have to file your schedules. So I think the hope at this point is that maybe they'll be able to get back to normal for the busy Thanksgiving period.

But I think everyone has to remember that all this does is buy time until the end of January. And, and then the FAA is not part of this deal to get funded beyond that. So we could be in the same exact place in a couple of months.

GILGER: So is that what you're walking, watching for going forward as you kind of see the impact of Washington on this industry?

SNYDER: Yeah, this is just a very frustrating situation for everyone that works at airlines, for travelers, just for the economy, for anyone that needs to get where they need to go. And it continues to be left in the balance as politics plays out.