WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced that flights at 40 major U.S. airports will be cut by 10 percent from Friday if the government shutdown continues.
Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, he did not disclose the details of airport-wise reduction in air travel capacity.
'We have asked (air traffic controllers) to show up for work, but I'm not naive to understand that they're trying to figure out how they meet their daily obligations,' Duffy told reporters. 'Because of that, we have seen staffing pressures throughout our airspace. Those who travel will see that we've had more delays. We've had more cancellations.'
Bryan Bedford, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said air traffic controllers have been reporting issues with fatigue due to additional hours of work to make up for severe staffing shortages.
Tens of thousands of air passengers have been affected as hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled due to a massive shortage in air traffic controllers who went on leave after being forced to work without paychecks.
'It is unusual, just as the shutdown is unusual, just as the fact that our controllers haven't been paid for a month is unusual,' said the FAA chief.
'As we start to implement this draw down in service, it will be restricted to these 40 high volume traffic markets,' Bedford said, without naming the airports. 'We're going to ask the airlines to work with us collaboratively to reduce their schedules.'
The cancellations are estimated to affect at least 3,500 flights per day.
Nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks, ensuring the safety of more than 50,000 daily operations across the national airspace system, FAA said earlier this week.
BBC quoted trade unions in the aviation sector as saying that a siginficant number of staff are becoming ill with stress or being forced to do additional jobs in search of income as the shutdown continues to deny them their paychecks.
Half of the nation's busiest airports faced severe staffing shortages over the weekend, triggering a cascade of delays and cancellations, the White House said Monday. Since the shutdown began, four times as many staffing shortages have been reported at air traffic control facilities compared to last year.
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