NEWS HEADLINES: Duffy warns air travel will slow to ‘a trickle’ during holiday season if govt. shutdown persists – One America News Network

OAN Staff Blake Wolf
2:17 PM – Sunday, November 9, 2025

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that air travel will be slowed to “a trickle” as Thanksgiving approaches, as the ongoing government shutdown continues to negatively impact the availability of air traffic controllers.

Major airports across the United States were mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to reduce air traffic by 4% in an attempt to manage the shortage of air traffic controllers, which is exacerbated by the government shutdown, as the controllers have not been paid in over a month.

The FAA also notified airlines to reduce flights by 6% starting on Tuesday, followed by a 10% reduction on November 14^th, should the shutdown continue to drag on.

“We are seeing signs of stress in the system, so we are proactively reducing the number of flights to make sure the American people continue to fly safely,” stated FAA administrator Bryan Bedford earlier this week.

Duffy also warned that flight reductions could rise by as much as 20% if the shutdown remains, which would impact a “substantial” amount of the public’s ability to travel for the holidays.

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“It’s only going to get worse… the two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle,” Duffy stated on Sunday.

“We have a number of people who want to get home for the holidays. They want to see their family … Listen, many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up,” he continued.

As of Sunday morning, over 4,200 flights have been delayed, and 1,520 have been canceled in response to Duffy’s directive.

“We’re working overtime to make sure that it is safe to travel,” Duffy proclaimed.

“If we have staffing triggers in locations in the American airspace, what we will do is, we will slow traffic, which means you will have delays, and then airlines might cancel flights,” he added.

Staffing triggers, which occur when schedule changes are made due to staffing shortages, totaled 81 on Saturday, according to Duffy, who noted that “18 of 22 controllers in Atlanta didn’t show up.”

“The problem is that as I try to reduce the pressure by lowering flights, I have more controllers that keep not coming to work. And so the pressure goes back up again.”

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