Furloughs cause delays at many major U.S. airports

This past Sunday marked the beginning of furloughs at U.S. airports. The furloughs will reduce staff by around 10% across the country. The FAA is warning that some airports may see delays of up to 3 1/2 hours due to these budget cuts. Monday already saw delays across the country, with New York’s La Guardia and JFK airports reporting delays of more than an hour.

The FAA has been mandated to furlough all of its 47,000 employees through the end of September, in order to help with the $637 million the agency must cut from its annual budget. Nearly 15,000 of those employees are air traffic controllers. With nearly 10% of the controllers scheduled to be off daily, the FAA has no choice but to space planes farther apart in order to safely manage air traffic. Transportation officials have questioned the need to furlough so many controllers, in contrast to the Transportation Security Administration avoiding furloughs.

If Monday’s pattern persists, fliers can expect delays at many of the major airports. The airlines are doing their best to adjust to these conditions in order to keep operations running safely and efficiently, but there is only so much they can do to limit the delays. It is difficult to judge the full impact of these furloughs, as there are other contributing factors for some delays, in particular the recent string of bad weather in some parts of the country. With that being said, it is safe to say that these cuts will have a profound effect on fliers from now until the end of September.