With the government shutdown, several issues have arisen, including the airport shutdown. As Congress moved to end the government shutdown on November 7th, 40 US airports came to a standstill, and all flights departing from any of these airports were halted, including boarding and takeoff. According to an article published by The New York Times, the reason for this major issue was caused by the decision of the Trump administration to cut up to 4 percent of air traffic and 40 of the busiest airports; the restrictions reached 6 percent but were still expected to grow up to 10 percent by the end of the week. The transportation department left the decision of which flights to cancel up to the airlines, but the international flights were not to be canceled. Before the 2025 shutdown, the last major airport shutdown was on December 22, 2018, and it lasted till January 25th, 2019.
On Monday, November 10th, the Senate passed legislation to reopen the government. It is expected to be approved by the House and then signed by President Trump. After this, the airline will still be rocky and will take time for aviation to recover, even after the government reopens. With this, the airlines have canceled flights days in advance and warned the passengers of the cancellation. According to an article published by The New York Times, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated that the cuts are designed to “alleviate the pressure” on Air Traffic Controllers, who are among the federal employees not being paid during the shutdown.
Freshman Dylan Ball recently went on a trip across the country and stated, “The flights went smoothly. I had one flight cancellation, but it got rebooked, and I had no problems after that.” Now that the government has reopened, the airports are gradually growing back to their usual, and Air Traffic Controllers are returning to work. It remains unclear when full flight schedules and paychecks will be restored.
