When it comes to the functioning of the federal government, I expect a certain level of dumbassery. So when even that level gets exceeded, it makes me angry. And today, I’m VERY angry. In fact, I’m so angry that I am bringing out the long-lost and rarely-used fire-red-with-anger Cranky Jackass Award. And since I’m told hanging things upside down is a sign of distress, I’ve added that into the mix as well. Congratulations to the US federal government for earning this very special Cranky Jackass, and please note I award it with extreme prejudice.
We all know that the government has been shut down for over a month. It’s the longest shutdown in the history of the federal government, and at least publicly, there doesn’t seem to be much movement toward resolution. The fight is ostensibly about the looming expiration of tax credits that make our broken health insurance system more affordable for the poorest Americans. This would cost about $24 billion in the next year, rising from there. The Democrats want to extend them while the Republicans say they won’t have this conversation until the government reopens, which means they don’t want to extend them.
The real reason for the fight, however, is that with the Republicans having control of both houses of Congress as well as the presidency, the Democrats have almost no ability to influence anything. And with the Republicans having shown no interest in compromise this year, the Dems seem compelled to hold on to any shred of power they can find. Since the Republicans can’t pass their budget without 60 votes in the Senate, the Democrats see an opportunity to flex their atrophied muscles.
This kind of posturing happens a lot, but what isn’t normal is the lack of substantive negotiations. You can draw your own conclusions about who is at fault — please don’t spam the comments with your opinions on that, because frankly, nobody cares — but the point is that as this fight stretches on, the impact on the country grows. And now it has hit the US airline industry very, very hard.
According to the hastily pushed out press conference by DOT Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, air traffic controllers are stressed. We didn’t need them to tell us that, of course. Every day at least one area of the ATC system sees delays due to so-called “staffing triggers.” As I started to write this, Newark is facing an average inbound delay of 68 minutes while Phoenix has a shocking 197 minute average inbound delay, both due to staffing shortages.
Of course, we’ve been talking about ATC staffing problems for years, so what does this have to do with the shutdown? Well, Secretary Duffy connected the dots for us in the press conference.
Controllers were last paid a partial paycheck in early October, but their last one was nothing. And there’s another stub coming out this week that will also be nothing. When the government is shut down, they can’t pay their employees, with some exceptions. Don’t worry, Congresspeople undeservingly still get paid, and they’ve found a way to pay the military so far. But air traffic controllers, no. It’s certainly not for lack of creative ideas. For example, Denver International Airport asked the FAA for a waiver yesterday so it could use airport revenues to pay controllers and then get reimbursed when the government is back open. Great idea! The FAA will probably find some reason to say it can’t be done.
So now, Duffy says, some controllers have resorted to second jobs. Others are overworked. And I would assume some are just rightfully not interested in pushing themselves harder than normal when they have no prospect of being paid in the near future. So, things are getting worse.
As Duffy explains it, the “data” is showing stress on the ATC system. Bedford went on…
But as we dig deeper into the data, what we find are issues of fatigue and that our flight controller or flight controllers are experiencing and we see that through voluntary safety disclosure reports coming in from commercial air transport pilots.
So pilots are reporting ATC issues, and the data is concerning enough that the FAA will reduce flying by 10 percent in forty of the biggest markets starting… tomorrow.
The absurdity of this should not be lost on anyone. Airlines first learned about this Wednesday, yesterday, mid-day. It was then publicly announced in the afternoon press conference. But the 40 airports were not released. And to be clear, I’m not just talking about being released to the public. The airlines were also not made aware of the impacted markets until last night, well after the initial briefing. In the press conference it was said that the markets would be released Thursday, but they did start to leak out late last night.
What we see is 33 of the top 40 markets in terms of Nov scheduled seats. The exemptions? Nashville, Austin, Raleigh/Durham, St Louis, Sacramento, New Orleans, and Kansas City. That’s strange since I know Nashville has had staffing triggers lately. Then the last seven consist of one huge general aviation airport – Teterboro outside New York City — and six big cargo airports in Anchorage, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Oakland, and Ontario.
Assuming this list is real, and the airlines are told to move forward, they will have about a day to try and completely rework their operations to cut 10 percent of flights, except now it’s leaking out that they’re going to ramp up to 10 percent, starting at 4 percent for tomorrow. Who knows what it’ll be by the time you read this? While the briefing noted that they will try to spread the pain around equally to the various airlines, I can’t say I know what that really means. I think my favorite quote was when a reporter asked if international flying was impacted.
I have to tell you, we haven’t we haven’t talked through the international component yet.
Later, United confirmed that apparently someone decided to have that conversation, and international flights aren’t impacted. What the heck are we doing here, people? I’m having trouble understanding any of this.
If this is such a clear safety issue being shown in the data, then why are we waiting a day to tell people which 40 airports are on the verge of possibly being unsafe and then ramping up to the full cut anyway? I don’t really even understand singling out airports anyway, especially since these airports that are listed touch more than 92 percent of all scheduled commercial flights. You’d think it would be easier to just blanket all airports. But then again, why are we putting a blanket reduction across any markets when the problems are different in different places… if they exist at all?
If this is an airport issue, as it appears to be, then this blunt instrument wouldn’t seem to be the right way to fix things. Maybe in certain markets that can result in needing one controller instead of two at certain times in certain sectors. Great. But we are talking about 10 percent across forty of the biggest markets. This doesn’t seem like a surgical cut, nor does it seem very well targeted to deal with the issue.
Whether this is a serious — though deeply flawed — effort to preserve safety or just a political move to ratchet up pressure to end the shutdown is unclear to me. But with this cut in place, that would seem to set a two week countdown clock to end the shutdown before the pain gets a lot worse. After all, when we hit the Thanksgiving travel week, you’re going to see increasingly pissed off travelers who just want to go see their families. That is coming very quickly.
President Trump and Congress… do your damn jobs.
