Flights Won't Fix Themselves When Shutdown Ends

The Senate advanced a deal to potentially end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Great news, but don't expect flights to immediately return to normal as soon as the government reopens.

Forty of the nation's busiest airports already reduced flights due to air traffic controller shortages. Those cuts aren't disappearing the moment the government reopens. Experts warn flight disruptions will continue for weeks, possibly longer.

"There's going to be extensive disruption across the entire nation's air transportation system," Henry Harteveldt, airline industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group, told USA TODAY. The consequences will outlast the shutdown itself.

Why Recovery Takes Time

Airlines can't just flip a switch and restore normal operations. Flight schedules are complicated webs of aircraft, crew positioning, and interconnected routes. Dismantling them happened fast. Rebuilding takes longer.

"For an airline to be told by the government they've got 36 or so hours to start dismembering their carefully built flight schedules doesn't give airlines a lot of time," Harteveldt said. Reversing those emergency cuts requires careful coordination.

When flights get canceled, it's not one plane or one route. "Airlines have to consider the flow of aircraft and crew when they cancel flights," said Ahmed Abdelghany, associate dean for research at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "If you cancel both flights of a round-trip loop, the aircraft and crew end up in the right place later. That avoids stranding planes and crew, which is what makes recovery possible."

Putting everything back together follows the same logic in reverse. You can't just randomly add flights back without ensuring planes and crews are positioned correctly. It takes coordination and time.

The Controller Crisis

The FAA's staffing problem won't resolve itself just because the shutdown ends. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the agency is short 1,000 to 2,000 air traffic controllers. Retirements accelerated during the shutdown.

"I used to have about four controllers retire a day before the shutdown," Duffy told CNN. "Now up to 15 to 20 a day are retiring."

Controllers worked without pay during the shutdown. Some decided retirement looked better than sticking around for the next funding crisis. No one can blame them, but it makes the staffing shortage worse.

Capacity restrictions will stay in place until staffing stabilizes. "It's not that the day the shutdown ends, this capacity restriction is lifted," said Hopper analyst Hayley Berg.

They're not going to lift this capacity reduction until air traffic control and the FAA are operating at the staffing level they need—and that might not happen immediately.

Training new air traffic controllers takes months, not days. Even if the FAA started hiring aggressively the moment the shutdown ends, those new hires won't be fully operational for a while.

Who Gets Hit Hardest

Major hubs like Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Chicago O'Hare, and LAX are seeing widespread impacts. But connecting passengers might actually have it worse.

Shye Gilad, a professor at Georgetown and former airline pilot, said connecting travelers "are potentially even more at risk, more likely to experience fare increases, less frequent flights, fewer options, and much longer layovers."

Miss your connection because your first flight got canceled? Good luck finding another option quickly when flight schedules are already reduced. Airlines operating with reduced capacity can't easily accommodate displaced passengers.

The Ripple Effects

Abdelghany warned that even after the government reopens, recovery takes time. "Some passengers will have to be refunded and removed from the system because capacity simply cannot absorb everyone. The severity and duration of this reduction will determine how long recovery takes."

Translation: not everyone with a ticket will get on a plane as scheduled. Airlines will have to refund people and bump them to later flights because there simply aren't enough seats available with reduced schedules.

Thanksgiving travel plans could still face disruptions even if the shutdown ends this week. "That could mean more traffic on the highways, other modes of transport, or simply people not being able to travel at all," Gilad said.

The financial impact spreads beyond airlines. "The financial impact will be felt not just by airlines and airport concessions but also by the destinations that see fewer visitors," Harteveldt said. Hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions—everyone loses when fewer people can travel.

The Reality

Government shutdowns have consequences that don't magically vanish when Congress finally passes a funding bill. Air traffic controllers retiring en masse can't be replaced overnight. Flight schedules dismantled in 36 hours take weeks to properly reconstruct.

Travelers should expect disruptions to continue. Book with extra time. Check flight status obsessively. Have backup plans. The shutdown might end, but the mess it created sticks around.

Capacity restrictions remain until the FAA can staff control towers properly. That requires hiring, training, and retaining controllers. None of that happens quickly, especially after a shutdown that pushed experienced controllers into early retirement.

Until then, airlines will gradually restore flights as staffing allows and schedules get untangled.

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