Millions of Americans are packing airports this Thanksgiving during the holiday getaway, but airline bookings took a dip this fall, due to uncertainty over air travel caused by the government shutdown.
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Millions of Americans are packing airports this Thanksgiving during the holiday getaway, but airline bookings took a dip this fall, due to uncertainty over air travel caused by the government shutdown.
As the 43-day shutdown stretched on, a growing number of people decided not to book flights, worried they might not make it to their destinations.
Bookings dropped by 4.5% through Nov. 24, according to the analytics firm Cirium.
Projected air travel had been on a record pace but reservations slowed as the shutdown dragged on.
The Federal Aviation Administration limited the number of flights during the shutdown, due to shortages of air traffic controllers. Eventually, restrictions were lifted in mid-November.
Still, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy this week was upbeat about the airlines rebounding from the shutdown.
“I can’t control the weather, I can’t control the mechanics of an airplane,” he said. “But things look good from the air traffic control side. We are back to staffing levels that we had before the shutdown.”
Congress seeks to avoid future air travel problems
Members of Congress want to take steps to ensure a future shutdown doesn’t cause more hassles for air travelers and for air traffic controllers to go without pay.
“Failing to pay the workforce that keeps our skies safe is not acceptable and not sustainable,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told lawmakers earlier this month at a U.S. Senate aviation subcommittee hearing.
He praised air traffic controllers for continuing to come to work, even though they went without paychecks for weeks.
Some controllers, however, didn’t come into work and some took second jobs to try to make ends meet.
That led to the flight restrictions, which in turn caused many people to hold off on booking with airlines, worried they could get stuck in airports over Thanksgiving.
Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, of Kansas, said lawmakers need to pass his legislation, which would require air traffic controllers to get paid during a shutdown.
He pointed out during a hearing he chaired that the U.S. Travel Association estimated more than $6 billion in travel spending was lost during the shutdown, because of the inability to fly.
“We cannot afford — I’m sure the airlines and others, the people who work in the airports and in aviation, cannot further afford the instability and chaos,” he said.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, of Illinois, agreed lawmakers need to make sure the FAA gets the funding it needs, and that air traffic controllers never go without pay.
“I think we should be talking about passing these pieces of legislation in a bipartisan way. We should not be scoring political points,” she said, referring to the political blame game related to the shutdown.
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