Politicians couldn’t overcome their differences and end the government shutdown over five weeks. Six air traffic controllers might have given them the final nudge they needed.
Six of the 13 controllers who normally staff a critical air traffic center in Virginia didn’t come to work Friday. That center handles air traffic in and out of the mid-Atlantic region and the New York City area.
Their absence contributed to a slowdown in air traffic and delays along the East Coast on Friday. LaGuardia Airport in New York and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey were particularly affected, and delays rippled outward from there — about 3,000 late flights by midafternoon.
Negotiations to end the shutdown had been gaining speed Thursday night. The air-traffic mess added urgency to the talks — by emphasizing how, for the first time, millions of ordinary Americans were affected.
On Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump went to a lectern in the Rose Garden and announced a deal to end — at least for three weeks — the partial government shutdown that had forced air traffic controllers and airport screeners to work without pay.
The shutdown had become a source of growing alarm for travelers and airlines. The absence rate among airport screeners peaked at 10 percent last weekend, meaning longer lines. Some government workers and contractors were grounded, costing Delta Air Lines up to $25 million and Southwest Airlines up to $15 million in lost revenue.
“This is crazy,” Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said Thursday. “It just absolutely needs to end. … It will harm the economy; it will harm air travel.”
Friday’s deal was greeted with relief in the travel industry.
Roger Dow, president of the U.S. Travel Association trade group, said he hoped the deal would end further disruption to air travel, “which undoubtedly would have begun to generate downstream economic damage throughout the country.”
Union leaders representing pilots and flight attendants — who had warned two days earlier that the shutdown could put safety in doubt — praised the end of the shutdown.
Those who represent the workers involved tempered their enthusiasm because the deal keeps the government running only through Feb. 15 while Trump and Democrats negotiate over the president’s demand for $5.7 billion in border-wall funding.
Flight delays that began on the East Coast became a major news story Friday, and the clearest sign yet of the shutdown’s impact on travel.
