Overtaxed and unpaid air traffic controllers are resigning “every day” due to stress from the government shutdown.
“Controllers are resigning every day now because of the prolonged nature of the shutdown,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told CNN.
“We hadn’t seen that before. And we’re also 400 controllers short—shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.”
Air traffic controllers are federal workers, which means they are part of the approximately 730,000 federal employees working without pay since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
Daniels warned that the controllers who remain are stretched dangerously thin. Many are calling in sick due to burnout as they struggle to pay bills.
“They’re calling their employer and saying, ‘I have no gas today. I cannot pay for my child care. Can I bring my children to work?’” he said.
On Oct. 7, less than a week after the shutdown began, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy noted that some air traffic controllers were already taking second jobs—a practice he discouraged. “I don’t want them delivering for DoorDash; I don’t want them driving Uber,” he said. “I want them coming to their facilities and controlling the airspace.”
The resignations are adding to the tremendous stress being placed on airports due to the government shutdown. Just this week, staffing shortages reached their highest levels since the shutdown began.
The Trump administration has responded to the crisis by curbing air traffic by 10 percent in 40 “high-traffic” markets, including New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and other major American cities.
The resignations also mean Americans can’t expect things to instantly return to normal once the shutdown ends, which is bad news for the upcoming holiday season.
“It will take us months to come out of all the impacts that it’s causing,” said Daniels.
Speaking to reporters at Reagan National Airport in Northern Virginia on Friday, Duffy acknowledged that the shutdown was weighing heavily on air traffic controllers who have gone unpaid since it began on Oct. 1.
“Let’s not lie about the pressure,” he said. “The ones who do come to work, they’re the ones that are working six days a week, 10 hours a day. You can do that for a couple weeks, but at one point, you’re going to get burned out, and that’s what we’re seeing. Now, there’s a higher level of fatigue with the controllers.”
The government shutdown, the longest in history, has stretched into its second month as senators refuse to negotiate on a government spending bill. Democrats have requested that Republicans include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies in the budget, and Republicans have refused to budge.
