As the holiday season approaches, many University of Iowa students are looking forward to heading home, but this year, the journey might not be so simple. Ongoing flight cancellations lingering even after the federal government shutdown ended have left some travelers stranded and others rethinking how they will get home.
Leaders of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration announced late Nov. 16 that the FAA’s emergency order requiring reduced flights at 40 airports will be terminated at 6 a.m. on Nov. 17. However, many UI students had already made adjustments to their travel plans.
For some students, the shutdown and its aftermath have caused disruptions. UI second-year Jackson Morrissey, a human physiology major from the Seattle area, said he’s planning to take the bus home for Thanksgiving this year after his parents and his roommate encountered trouble with recent flights.
“My roommate actually just flew down to Tampa this weekend, and his flight back got canceled,” Morrissey said. “He was stuck in Tampa until 5 a.m. last night.”
National data from the days leading up to the announcement show disruptions had begun stabilizing. Data from flight tracking software FlightAware indicated flight cancellations in the U.S. had dropped from their peak of 2,800 per day to just 163 on Nov. 16.
Air traffic controllers, designated as essential federal employees, were required to work without pay throughout the shutdown. At its peak on Nov. 8, the FAA recorded 81 staffing triggers in a single day. But by Nov. 14 and 15, staffing triggers dropped to six and eight, respectively, and only one on Nov. 16, which aligned with pre-shutdown numbers.
During the shutdown, 20 to 40 percent of controllers were absent on any given day at the 30 largest U.S. airports, according to the FAA.
By Nov. 13, FAA reduced flights into, between, and out of 40 U.S. airports by 8 percent, ramping up to 10 percent by Nov. 14. Even though President Donald Trump signed a bill to reopen the government after 43 days, flights were still reduced by 3 percent daily until the FAA determined normal operations could continue.
“I want to thank the FAA’s dedicated safety team for keeping our skies secure during the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history and the country’s patience for putting safety first,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in an announcement Nov. 16, adding that air traffic controllers have returned to their posts and normal operations may resume.
Pam Hinman, director of marketing and communications for the Eastern Iowa Airport, or CID, said the airport has been operating normally despite having a few flight cancellations.
CID was not one of the 40 airports the FAA was focused on.
Morrissey said his parents are planning to drive from their home in Seattle to Omaha, Nebraska, for Thanksgiving this year to avoid the travel nightmare they worry they will encounter while flying.
“I don’t know if my dad even bought the [plane] tickets because of the shutdown now,” Morrissey said. “So they might just be driving instead of flying. It’s a two or three-day road trip.”
Other students have not noticed much of a difference. Tessa Goldman, a linguistics and Japanese double major from Boulder, Colorado, said she has not experienced any problems booking flights home or hearing about delays.
Before the FAA announced normal operations would continue, Goldman said she hadn’t received any notifications about her flight being delayed or canceled.
“While it was slightly worrying to hear the flights were getting canceled because of the government shutdown, I felt that it wasn’t going to affect my travel plans super intensely because I wasn’t actively following the shutdown news,” Goldman said after the announcement. “I just figured it was going to work out eventually.”
While Morrissey said the shutdown added uncertainty to his family’s plans, Goldman was less concerned.
“This government shutdown has only been a couple of days longer than the last one, and that one was a couple of days longer than the one before that,” Goldman said. “So I haven’t been worried about it, because if you just look at the track, it’s pretty much a pattern.”
Looking ahead, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a press conference Nov. 11 that even with the shutdown over, long-term staffing challenges will still impact the aviation system. The FAA remains short roughly 2,000 air traffic controllers, and retirements continue at a faster rate than before the shutdown.
“Long after [the media finishes] covering the shutdown,” Duffy said. “We are going to be stuck dealing with this problem.”