More than 1,530 flights were cancelled in the United States, while thousands more were delayed on Saturday after authorities ordered airports to reduce air traffic because of the ongoing government shutdown.
According to figures published by the flight tracking website, FlightAware, the cancellations on Saturday marked an uptick from the 1,025 cancellations the day before.
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The trend is set to continue into Sunday, with another 1,000 cancellations already reported on the website.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said there were air traffic control staffing issues affecting 42 airport towers and other centres and delaying flights in at least 12 major US cities, including Atlanta, Newark, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
Flights crossing six different high-traffic areas were also facing delays.
According to FlightAware, some 6,000 flights were delayed on Saturday while 7,000 were delayed on Friday.
The FAA had instructed airlines to cut 4 percent of daily flights starting on Friday at 40 major airports because of air traffic control safety concerns.
The shutdown, which has reached a record 39 days, has led to shortages of air traffic controllers who, like other federal employees, have not been paid for weeks.
Reductions in flights are mandated to rise to 6 percent on Tuesday and hit 10 percent by November 14.
The air traffic absences prompted the FAA to impose ground delay programmes at nine airports on Saturday, with delays averaging 282 minutes for flights at Atlanta, one of the busiest US airports.
The cuts, which began on Friday morning, include about 700 flights from the four largest carriers: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.
The four airlines cancelled about the same number of flights on Saturday, under the FAA mandate, but were forced to cancel additional flights due to air traffic control staffing issues.
Earlier this week, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said 20 to 40 percent of controllers had not been showing up for work over the previous days.
He added on Friday that the US airport system was seeing “signs of stress” and the cuts to air traffic were being made “proactively” to ensure safety standards.
The FAA’s 14,000 air traffic controllers and approximately 50,000 transportation security officers at US airports have been forced to work without pay because they are deemed “essential workers”. Many air traffic controllers were notified on Thursday that they would receive no compensation for a second consecutive pay period next week.
Approximately 730,000 civilian federal employees are in the same position, due to the shutdown, which enters its 40th day on Sunday, according to data from the Washington, DC-based Bipartisan Policy Centre.
Another 670,000 federal workers have been furloughed.
The chaos at US airports has put renewed pressure on Democrats and Republicans to end the shutdown, although both parties have been unable to agree on a government spending bill. The Democrats blame the shutdown on a Republican refusal to negotiate over health insurance subsidies that will expire at the end of this year.
The US is due to enter its busiest travel season at the end of the month during the Thanksgiving holiday, followed by another surge in travel around Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Legislators will face thousands of unhappy constituents if delays and cancellations continue. Cuts to air traffic will also affect US deliveries and shipping because commercial aircraft commonly double as freight carriers, according to The Associated Press news agency.
Greg Raiff, CEO of Elevate Aviation Group, said the effect will be felt across the US economy.
“This shutdown is going to impact everything from cargo aircraft to people getting to business meetings to tourists being able to travel,” he told AP. “It’s going to hit the hotel taxes and city taxes. There’s a cascading effect that results from this thing.”
