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    List of US airports cutting flights on Friday due to federal government shutdown

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    The Federal Aviation Administration is forcing airlines to cut 10% of their flights at 40 of the busiest airports across the US to reduce pressure on air traffic controllers during the ongoing federal government shutdown and ensure that flying remains safe.The cuts will start to take effect on Friday. Travelers should check with their airlines to see if their flight has been cut. Here is a list of airports affected:1. Anchorage international in Alaska2. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international in Georgia3. Boston Logan international in Massachusetts4. Baltimore/Washington international in Maryland5. Charlotte Douglas international in North Carolina6. Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky international in Ohio7. Dallas Love Field in Texas8. Ronald Reagan Washington National in Virginia9. Denver international in Colorado10. Dallas/Fort Worth international in Texas11. Detroit Metropolitan Wayne county in Michigan12. Newark Liberty international in New Jersey13. Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood international in Florida14. Honolulu international in Hawaii15. Houston Hobby in Texas16. Washington Dulles international in Virginia17. George Bush Houston intercontinental in Texas18. Indianapolis international in Indiana19. John F Kennedy international in New York20. Harry Reid international in Las Vegas21. Los Angeles international in California22. LaGuardia in New York23. Orlando international in Florida24. Chicago Midway international in Illinois25. Memphis international in Tennessee26. Miami international in Florida27. Minneapolis/St Paul international in Minnesota28. Oakland international in California29. Ontario international in California30. Chicago O‘Hare international in Illinois31. Portland international in Oregon32. Philadelphia international in Pennsylvania33. Phoenix Sky Harbor international in Arizona34. San Diego international in California35. Louisville international in Kentucky36. Seattle/Tacoma international in Washington37. San Francisco international in California38. Salt Lake City international in Utah39. Teterboro in New Jersey40. Tampa international in Florida More

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      Flights delayed across US amid air traffic controller shortages as shutdown drags on

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      Nearly 50% of the 30 busiest US airports faced shortages of air traffic controllers, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday, leading to flight delays nationwide as a federal government shutdown hit its 31st day.The absence of controllers on Friday is by far the most widespread since the shutdown began, with one of the worst-hit regions being New York, where 80% of air traffic controllers were out, the agency said.At least 35 FAA facilities, including several at the largest US airports, reported staffing problems. Airports affected included facilities in New York City, Austin, Newark, Phoenix, Washington, Nashville, Dallas and Denver. At some airports, delays averaged one hour or more.The shutdown has forced 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers to work without pay.“After 31 days without pay, air traffic controllers are under immense stress and fatigue,” the FAA said late on Friday.“The shutdown must end so that these controllers receive the pay they’ve earned and travelers can avoid further disruptions and delays,” it added.The impact on the system would have been far worse on a typical Friday. However, Halloween evening traffic was 20% lower than usual, which helped mitigate the effects of staffing shortages, airline officials said.More than 5,600 flights were delayed on Friday and 500 canceled, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.At New York City’s LaGuardia airport, 50% of flights were delayed and 12% canceled, with delays averaging 140 minutes, while Washington DC’s Reagan National airport had a quarter of flights delayed.Airlines are bracing for more flight disruptions.“Coming into this weekend and then the week after, I think you are going to see even more disruptions in the airspace,” the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom.On Thursday, air traffic control staffing shortages snarled flights at Orlando, Dallas/Fort Worth and Washington DC, with FlightAware data showing 7,300 flights delayed and 1,250 canceled across the US.Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have all called on Congress to quickly pass a stopgap funding bill known as a “continuing resolution” to let the government reopen amid talks on disputes over healthcare policy.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association’s president, Nick Daniels, on Friday joined the airlines in calling for a continuing resolution.The government shutdown began on 1 October and continues as a federal funding bill has stalled in Congress.Republican lawmakers want to pass a “clean” funding measure with no strings attached while Democrats have demanded talks on extending healthcare subsidies set to expire at year’s end.Airlines have repeatedly called for an end to the shutdown, citing aviation safety risks.The shutdown has exacerbated existing staffing shortages, threatening to cause widespread disruptions similar to those that helped end a 35-day government shutdown in 2019.The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels, and many had been working mandatory overtime as well as six-day weeks even before the shutdown. More

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      Trump announces more than $200bn of deals between US and UAE

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      Donald Trump has announced deals totaling more than $200bn between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, including a $14.5bn commitment among Boeing, GE Aerospace and Etihad Airways, as he pledged to strengthen ties between the US and the Gulf state during a multiday trip to the Middle East.The White House said on Thursday that Boeing and GE had received a commitment from Etihad Airways to invest $14.5bn to buy 28 US-made Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE engines.“With the inclusion of the next-generation 777X in its fleet plan, the investment deepens the longstanding commercial aviation partnership between the UAE and the United States, fueling American manufacturing, driving exports,” the White House said.Antonoaldo Neves, the CEO of Etihad, said last month that the airline planned to add 20 to 22 new planes to its fleet of roughly 100 aircraft this year, as it aims to expand to more than 170 planes by 2030 and boost Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification strategy.Etihad, which is owned by Abu Dhabi’s $225bn wealth fund ADQ, has been through a multiyear restructuring and management shake-up, but has expanded under Neves.He said that 10 of the new aircraft this year would be Airbus A321LRs, which the carrier launched on Monday and will start operating in August. The remainder include six Airbus A350s and four Boeing 787s.The news follows a Wednesday announcement that Boeing had landed its largest-ever deal for wide-body airplanes, after securing an order for $96bn worth of Boeing jets from Qatar.The deal-making comes as the US president nears the ends of his multiday tour in the Middle East. Controversy has dogged the visit after the president announced earlier this week that he planned to accept a $400m luxury jumbo jet from the government of Qatar, raising numerous ethical concerns.Trump has since doubled down on his plans to accept the airplane as the new Air Force One, and eventually transfer it to his presidential library. “We’re the United States of America. I believe we should have the most impressive plane,” he said on Wednesday. More

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      Thousands sign petition urging Avelo airline to halt deportation flights for Ice

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      Several thousand people have signed a petition urging Avelo Airlines to halt its plans to carry out deportation flights in cooperation with the Trump administration.This comes as the budget airline company recently said it had signed an agreement to fly federal deportation flights for the administration from Mesa, Arizona, starting in May.Andrew Levy, the CEO of the Houston, Texas-based airline, said in a statement to the Associated Press that the company is flying for the US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agency as part of a “long-term charter program” to support the department’s deportation efforts.The flights, the company said, will use three Boeing 737-800 aircraft based out of Mesa Gateway airport.“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic,” Levy said in a statement to 12News KPNX in Arizona. “After significant deliberations, we determined this charter flying will provide us with the stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep our more than 1,100 crew members employed for years to come.”Recent job postings from the airline appear to advertise positions based in Mesa, Arizona.In one job listing for flight attendants, Avelo states that the “flights will be both domestic and international trips to support DHS’s deportation efforts” and that “Our DHS charter service may consist of local day trips and/or overnights.”A petition was launched by the New Haven Immigrant Heritage Coalition and as of Tuesday afternoon, it has garnered about 4,200 signatures.“We pledge to boycott the airline until they stop plans to profit off Ice flights that are tearing families and communities apart,” the petition reads.Individuals, including the mayor of New Haven, Connecticut – where Avelo Airlines said in December it has its largest base – have criticized the agreement.In a statement to the New Haven Independent, the mayor, Justin Elicker, a Democrat, called Avelo Airlines’ decision to run the charter operation for the deportation flights as “deeply disappointing and disturbing”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“For a company that champions themselves as ​‘New Haven’s hometown airline,’ this business decision is antithetical to New Haven’s values,” he said.Elicker said that he had called Levy over the weekend ​to express his objection to the deal and urged him to reconsider.“Travel should be about bringing people together, not tearing families apart,” he added. More

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      Doubts raised over US travel system during 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics

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      The United States is unprepared for the burdens placed on its air travel system when the country hosts the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, according to a report released on Wednesday.The US Travel Association, a non-profit that represents the travel industry, commissioned a report written by former government officials and industry experts. The report raises concerns about visas, creaking infrastructure and poor security technology.The report says that the World Cup, Olympics and Paralympics, 2025 Ryder Cup and celebrations for the US’s 250th birthday could draw in an estimated 40 million visitors to the country.“We’re not ready to host the upcoming mega decade of events that will draw millions of domestic and international travelers. This poses risks to our national security and hampers economic growth,” the report says.While the Trump administration has made significant cuts across the government, the US Travel Association said there needs to be investment in visa processing and airport security.“The president has been outspoken about making this the gold standard of World Cups, the best Olympics that has ever been held,” Geoff Freeman, the US Travel Association’s CEO, told ESPN. “To do those things, to achieve those goals, you’ve got to make some of these investments.”Freeman said he had met with White House officials in the last week. He highlighted visa wait times as a particular problem area, with approval times for some countries that may reach the World Cup – such as Colombia – currently running at nearly two years.“People want to come, but they’re not coming,” Freeman said. “It gets down to these visa wait times. It gets down to the customs inefficiencies. It gets down to a perception in instances that people aren’t welcome. We’re very concerned.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US will co-host the World Cup with Mexico and Canada, although most of the game will take place in the US. Concerns have also been raised about extreme temperatures players could face during the tournament. More

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      Why did Delta Air Lines tweet that the Palestinian flag is ‘terrifying’? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      There’s been a huge increase in scary airline incidents recently. Last week, there was yet another one when passengers on a Delta flight from Boston to West Palm Beach experienced extreme turbulence. No, this wasn’t a Boeing-related safety glitch; it was far more serious than that. A flight attendant was wearing a tiny Palestine flag pin on his uniform.Terrifying, right? Just unbelievable that, nine months into Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, someone might feel the urge to publicly express solidarity with a group of people who are being bombed into oblivion. Absolutely mind-boggling that someone might feel moved by the fact that, according to United Nations rights experts, Israel has carried out a “targeted starvation campaign” in Gaza and babies are dying of malnutrition. Really chilling that an American felt upset by their taxpayer money being used to fund an assault which is killing civilians at a scale and pace many experts have called “unprecedented”.Luckily there was a brave passenger on the plane to call this foolishness out. Someone snapped a photo of the flight attendant and posted it on social media. Various anti-Palestinian accounts quickly mobilized to uncover the man’s identity and pressure Delta to get him fired. A Twitter account called iliketeslas then found another picture of a Delta employee wearing a Palestine flag and tweeted: “imagine getting into a @Delta flight and seeing workers with Hamas badges in the air. What do you do?”Well, personally, the first thing I’d do is explain to the person complaining that the Palestinian flag is not a “Hamas badge”. But I’m not the person manning Delta’s official Twitter/X account. Instead, that person replied from Delta’s official X account: “I hear you and I’d be terrified as well, personally. Our employees reflect our culture and we do not take it lightly when our policy is not being followed.”Let me just spell that out. Someone on Delta’s communication team thinks the Palestinian flag is terrifying and had no problem tweeting that out from the company’s official @Delta account.And this, by the way, isn’t the first time that Delta has been in the news for cracking down on pro-Palestinian messages. This week the non-profit news organization Truthout published a piece alleging that an anti-Zionist Jewish American man called Louie Siegel was told to remove a pro-ceasefire T-shirt during a recent Delta Air Lines flight from São Paulo to Chicago. The T-shirt said “Not in Our Name” on the front side and “Jews Say Ceasefire Now” on the back. Real extremist stuff, eh? Siegel had to cover it up to stay on the plane and was warned he would be put on a no-fly list if he didn’t comply.Delta’s tweet about the terrifying Palestinian flag, by the way, was quickly deleted. But a proper apology from the airline hasn’t been forthcoming. “Delta removed a mistakenly posted comment on X Tuesday because it was not in line with our values and our mission to connect the world,” a Delta spokesperson told me via email on Thursday. “The team member responsible for the post has been counseled and no longer supports Delta’s social channels. We apologize for this error.”Delta’s spokesperson also clarified that neither flight attendant was fired for wearing the pins and said they’d been offered support. They added: “However, as of [Thursday], Delta is shifting its pin allowance policy effective July 15. Beginning then, only US flags will be permitted to be worn on uniforms. Previously, pins representing countries/nationalities of the world had been permitted.”While it’s encouraging that Delta’s flight attendants haven’t been terminated for the crime of wearing a Palestinian flag pin, minimizing this incident as an “error” is insulting. Writing an important email that says “I hope you like tit!” instead of “I hope you like it!” (which is something I have unfortunately done) is what you call an error. Using an official corporate social media account to call the Palestinian flag terrifying, on the other hand, is a hell of a lot more than that.Rather, it’s yet another example of just how widespread and normalized anti-Palestinian bigotry has become in the US. Indeed, racism towards Palestinians is so acceptable that when Donald Trump used “Palestinian” as a slur against Joe Biden in the recent debate, there was barely any outrage. Biden certainly didn’t call Trump out on his racism.Gaza is hell on earth at the moment. Perhaps there will be a ceasefire at one point, but Gaza will never be the same. According to a recent piece by the Israeli paper Haaretz, “The IDF has taken control of 26% of the Gaza Strip … [and] the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern part of the Strip is becoming permanent. This, an IDF soldier told Haaretz, is ‘an effort at prolonged occupation’.”Meanwhile Israel is loudly and proudly annexing the occupied West Bank, recently approving the largest seizure of land in more than three decades, according to a report by an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog.We are witnessing ethnic cleansing and mass murder in real time and yet speaking out about these horrors – doing something as little as wearing a Palestinian pin in public – puts you at risk of being smeared, harassed and fired from your job. It’s become difficult to even speak about the death toll in Gaza now. The House recently passed an amendment preventing the state department from citing the Gaza health ministry’s death toll statistics for the war. That is the only official entity tracking death data in Gaza; banning these figures effectively halts any conversation about the death toll.“They want to erase the Palestinians who are living,” said Representative Rashida Tlaib in response to the amendment, “and now they are trying to erase the Palestinians who are dead.” As Tlaib says, there is a widespread effort to “dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence”. It’s this that should terrify you. Not a tiny Palestinian flag.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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      Boeing bosses accused of ‘strip mining’ company for profit in Senate hearing

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      The CEO of Boeing has acknowledged “something went wrong” at the embattled planemaker after another whistleblower came forward, alleging that corners were cut on its production line.Dave Calhoun acknowledged some employees who raised concerns about safety and quality inside the company faced retaliation.The executive did not have the number of managers fired for retaliating against whistleblowers “on the tip of my tongue”, he told senators, “but I know it happens”.At a hearing entitled “Boeing’s Broken Safety Culture”, Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, declared that the company was facing a “moment of reckoning” – and called for prosecutions.In heated exchanges, Calhoun – who has already announced plans to step down later this year – and Boeing executives were accused of “strip mining” the company for profit. “You’re cutting corners, you’re eliminating safety procedures, you’re sticking it to your employees,” said Josh Hawley, the Republican senator.“It’s working out great for you,” Hawley added, citing Calhoun’s “extraordinary” $33m pay package and asking why he had not yet resigned. “I’m sticking this through,” Calhoun replied. “I am proud of every action we have taken.”Hours before the session Sam Mohawk, a quality assurance inspector for the company in Renton, Washington, became the latest Boeing employee to go public with claims of safety issues. He alleged that he was instructed by his supervisors to conceal evidence from regulators.Boeing has come under intense scrutiny since a terrifying cabin panel blowout in January prompted fresh questions about quality and safety.View image in fullscreen“More than a dozen” whistleblowers have now come forward, according to Blumenthal, who urged other concerned workers at Boeing to contact his office. “Boeing needs to stop thinking about the next earnings call and start thinking about the next generation.”Calhoun insisted that he did not “recognize any of the Boeing you describe” when senators accused the company of weakening safety systems. “​Our culture is far from perfect,” he said, “but we are taking action, and we are making progress.”As he spoke, the families of victims of two Boeing plane crashes, in 2018 and 2019, in which 346 people were killed, and whistleblowers who spoke out about their experiences at the company, were sitting with him in the room.Turning to the families before starting his evidence, Calhoun apologized to them directly for their “gut-wrenching” losses.The company has delivered a quality improvement plan to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and claimed that employees have been emboldened to come forward with safety and quality concerns on the factory floor.But accounts from inside Boeing’s facilities have raised further questions. Earlier this month the Guardian reported on claims the firm’s largest factory was in “panic mode”.Whistleblowers including Sam Salehpour, a current engineer at Boeing, and Roy Irvin, a former quality investigator, have gone public with allegations about safety in recent months.“This is a culture that continues to prioritize profits, push limits and disregard its workers,” Blumenthal said of Boeing before Tuesday’s hearing. “A culture that enables retaliation against those who do not submit to the bottom line. A culture that desperately needs to be repaired.”Blumenthal said Mohawk recently told the panel he had witnessed systemic disregard for documentation and accountability of nonconforming parts.In a report released by the committee, Mohawk said his work handling nonconforming parts became significantly more “complex and demanding” after the resumption of production of the 737 Max, its bestselling commercial jet, in 2020. Production had been suspended following the two crashes in 2018 and 2019.Mohawk alleged the number of nonconformance reports soared 300% compared with before the grounding of the Max. The 737 program lost parts that were intentionally hidden from the FAA during one inspection, he claimed.Mohawk filed a related claim in June with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal regulator.Boeing said: “We received this document late Monday evening and are reviewing the claims. We continuously encourage employees to report all concerns as our priority is to ensure the safety of our airplanes and the flying public.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      ‘Very alarming’: US airport screenings see a surge in loaded guns

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      ‘Very alarming’: US airport screenings see a surge in loaded gunsYou can’t carry a bottle of water on board the plane, but plenty of people – knowingly and unknowingly – try to carry gunA Connecticut woman was the first of the week, walking her child through security at New York’s JFK airport with a loaded gun in her purse and “one in the chamber”, as officials put it.Over the following days, an X-ray machine detected a 9mm pistol and ammunition in the hand luggage of a passenger in Philadelphia, a .45 caliber handgun and seven bullets in the carry-on bag of a man boarding a plane at New York’s Westchester airport, and a loaded weapon carried through screening in Wisconsin. ‘The kids need help’: how young people want adults to tackle gun violenceRead moreSecurity officers confiscated two firearms in two days at the Columbus, Ohio international airport. Other arrests for guns turned up by searches were made at terminals in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.And that was just a fraction of the 18 guns confiscated every day on average from passengers traversing flight security across the US – a number that has been rising for years and is likely to continue doing so as firearms sales rise and more states make it easier to carry concealed weapons – even in airports.Two decades after 9/11, thousands of passengers who are otherwise conditioned to remove their shoes, bag their liquids and all too often surrender their dignity at security screenings somehow manage to forget they are carrying an object that is the very reason they are being searched in the first place.Last year, the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) seized 6,542 guns from people about to board planes at 262 airports – a sixfold increase since 2010. Nearly nine in 10 of the weapons were loaded.Jeffrey Price, former assistant director of security at Denver international airport and co-author of a book on aviation security, said he wasn’t surprised.“One of our unique American traits is the number of people who purchase a weapon and forget they even have the thing with them. It seems like every time there’s another active shooter incident, a lot more people go out and buy guns because they feel scared,” he said.“A lot of those people who buy a gun in the heat of the moment, they toss it in their laptop bag or in their purse, and then they forget they have it. Next thing you know, they’re at the airport and oh, my gosh, I forgot I put that in there. Which in itself is pretty scary because it could mean they’re leaving a bag lying around at home with a gun in for a kid to get to.”The TSA says that passengers claiming to forget they even have a gun is the most common explanation and is frequently accepted by the police. Although officials were more skeptical about a man who blamed his mother for packing a rifle found in his bag at Baltimore airport.Price said other factors are also at work.”There’s also [a] certain percentage of people that think because they’ve been issued a permit (to carry a gun) they can carry it anywhere, anytime, which is not true. And then you’ve got people that just think they can slip it through. The TSA won’t notice,” he said.They would include the passengers caught trying to smuggle guns stuffed inside a raw chicken, jars of peanut butter, a PlayStation and an arm sling.Some cities and states press criminal charges, and the offending individual is marched out the airport in handcuffs. But it is not uncommon in gun-friendly parts of the country for a passenger to be allowed to put their weapon in their car and return to board their flight.Atlanta airport tops the gun seizure table with more than one a day found in passenger hand luggage.“It is very alarming,” Balram Bheodari, manager of Atlanta airport, told a congressional hearing last year about the record number of guns seized on his watch. “Eighty-six percent of those weapons had a round in the chamber or a loaded magazine in the weapon. Very, very alarming.”Bheodari had to contend with an incident 15 months ago in which a passenger “lunged” for a bag as a TSA agent began to search it and accidentally fired a gun inside, sending people around him diving for the floor and shutting down flight departures. The airport put out a message assuring passengers “there was not an active shooter”.The man ran out the airport with the gun but left his boarding pass behind and was arrested three days later.It was perhaps no surprise that Atlanta leads the nation. In 2014, Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law pushed by the National Rifle Association allowing people to carry loaded guns in the state’s airports.Georgia was also one of 10 states to pass laws over the past couple of years no longer requiring a permit to carry a concealed firearm. Tennessee was another. The state’s TSA’s security director, Steve Wood, drew a direct line between weaker gun regulation and weapons at airports.“Since the implementation of new gun laws in the state last year, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of firearms brought to Tennessee security checkpoints,” he said.There is also the disturbing question of how many guns go undetected.In 2015, ABC News revealed that the TSA sent undercover investigators through airport checkpoints carrying real guns and fake bombs. Security officers only discovered three of the 70 smuggled items.The TSA’s director was sacked. The Department of Homeland Security promised reforms but two years later security agents were still failing to detect about 80% of weapons in tests because of a mix of inadequate equipment and human failings.Since then the TSA has stopped talking publicly about such tests of its system.Ban on marijuana users owning guns is unconstitutional, judge rulesRead morePrice said travelers should assume that some guns get on to planes.“It’s really a matter of deterrence. Can we catch enough prohibited items to make it not worth a terrorist or criminal’s effort to try and get through the system with one? We’re never gonna catch everything. That some guns will get onto planes is just one of those things we have to accept if we’re going to accept aviation as part of our daily lives,” he said.Which makes it something of a miracle that no one has been shot accidentally mid-flight.“It is kind of amazing,” said Price. “One of the few that did go off accidentally was when a US Airways pilot, who was authorized to carry on a gun on the flight deck, fired off a round as he was putting it back in its holster.”The pilot said he was trying to stow the gun for landing when it went off, blowing a hole in the cockpit just below the window.TopicsUS gun controlGeorgiaAirline industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s been rough’: passengers weather another day of chaos at US airports

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      ‘It’s been rough’: passengers weather another day of chaos at US airportsFrom weather disruptions to computer problems to crew shortages, customers are once again caught in travel limbo After an $8bn makeover, New York’s new LaGuardia airport complex is finally an airport the city can be proud of. Unfortunately the same can not be said for the industry it serves.For the second time in almost two weeks thousands of flights were canceled across the US on Wednesday – this time because of what appears to be a snafu with an antiquated computer system. Passengers have had enough.“It’s been rough this last couple of years,” said Deb Alexis, who had traveled to New York from Orlando. “The flight was great but now there’s stress because the bags haven’t come. Seems like there’s a lot of confusion and delays nowadays.”‘A wild Christmas eve’: strangers stranded by airline chaos team up for road tripsRead moreAsked if airline travel is becoming altogether too much trouble, Danny Dividu, on his way to Georgia when his Southwest plane was canceled, said simply: “Hell yes. Now I’ve got to go back upstairs to check in again. I usually go Greyhound. Best way to go. I hate flying. It’s too much hassle, always has been.”Another day, another crisis at US airports.It might have been the cascading weather-related disruptions the US experienced over the holidays, or computer issues, scheduling, pilot or crew shortages but the outcome was familiar: customers left in a helpless state of air travel limbo.Whatever the precise cause of Wednesday’s issues, they are part of a wider set of problems for travelers, airlines and the FAA, said Robert Mann, a former airline executive who now runs the consulting firm RW Mann & Company.“The FAA runs on hardware and software that is in many cases decades old,” he said. “And it’s a multi-year effort to build and install them.”Even a small, regional failure can have knock-on effects for the entire network, he said, but this “seems to be a system failure” and travelers could expect more issues unless something is done.The FAA estimates that delayed and canceled flights cost the US economy $33bn in 2019. “Everyone – the department of transportation, the general accounting office, Congress – agree that there is a significant cost to this but nobody does anything about it,” Mann said.Congress is set to debate the funding of the FAA this year and the hearings are expected to be heated. The FAA is currently without a leader and has been since last March.Biden has nominated Phillip Washington, currently the chief executive of Denver International Airport, to the position. But his nomination has been clouded by criticism of his lack of experience in the aviation industry and ties to a corruption scandal.With Republicans now in charge of the House, Biden’s nomination looks more uncertain and the latest mess will expose the transport secretary, Pete Buttigieg, to more criticism following the chaos at US airports over the holidays.After the flight restrictions were lifted, Buttigieg said his department was not ruling out the possibility that nefarious activity was to blame for the computer system outage.“We’re not prepared to rule that out,” Buttigieg said in an interview on MSNBC. “There is no direct indication of any kind of external or nefarious activity, but we are not yet prepared to rule that out,” Buttigieg said.After the incident senator Ted Cruz, the top Republican on the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, called for congressional reforms to the FAA.Southwest Airlines under investigation as more flights canceled after stormRead more“The flying public deserves safety in the sky,” the Texas senator said in a statement. “The administration needs to explain to Congress what happened, and Congress should enact reforms in this year’s FAA reauthorization legislation.”Wednesday’s incident, Cruz added, “highlights why the public needs a competent, proven leader with substantive aviation experience leading the FAA”.By mid-morning, the FAA issued its fifth bulletin. “Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the United States following an overnight outage,” the agency said in a statement.By then, it was too late for many passengers. Jordan Cousins, 25, on his way to Nashville on Southwest from New York’s LaGuardia, said his Southwest flight had been delayed twice and then canceled entirely.“It’s this and then it’s that. You never know. You may have a smooth flight or there may be a problem. It may be at the counter, with the plane, or something,” he said. “Plans never go as planned.”TopicsAirline industryUS politicsNew YorkAir transportfeaturesReuse this content More