Flight in your future? Expert advice for air travel amid government shutdown
And how unpaid federal worker walkouts are affecting airports
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It’s a busy staycation or travel weekend for Minnesota families with the long MEA school break.
While flight delays and cancellations at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport have been minimal as of Tuesday, other major hubs around the country are facing flight delays and ground stops because of the government shutdown. In a matter of days, federal workers won’t receive any pay, causing some air traffic controllers to skip their shifts.
Kyle Potter of Thrifty Traveler joined MPR News’ Emily Bright on Morning Edition to talk about the shutdown’s ripple effects on flights.
The following has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the conversation by clicking the player button above.
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There are travel troubles nationwide. What’s the situation at MSP?
By and large, everything is moving pretty smoothly at MSP and has been since the shutdown began. But we're starting to see concerns ripple out to large nationwide airports like LAX [in Los Angeles] and D.C., and that, to me, says that this has the prospect of becoming an even bigger problem as the week drags on.
Should people be worried about their safety?
I don't think people should be worried about their safety. The reason why we're seeing ground stops get instituted at major airports, why we're seeing delays, is so the system can continue to move safely.
So I don't think people should be worried about safety. I do think people should be at least on high alert for the possibility that they're not going to make it to where they're trying to go on time.
Are we expecting MEA travel to be similar to other years?
All signs point to yes. Travel demand looks a little bit different now. It's skewing more towards wealthier families, people with a lot of expendable income and business travelers getting out and about than it was a couple of years ago. But the numbers nationwide leading into this long weekend here in Minnesota are as high as they've ever been. So I don't expect this to be anything other than another very busy travel weekend.
What should folks flying into or out of MSP know?
I think everybody's just got to pay close attention to the news. Because look, if something breaks through in Washington, D.C., and there's a deal made to end this federal government shutdown, all the doubt that's currently clouding air travel right now dissipates pretty quickly.
On the other hand, if the problems that we've seen across the country at air traffic control centers nationwide do start to spread to the Midwest and to Minneapolis, then I think it's time to start paying really close attention to your reservations and make sure that your flight is going to depart on time as scheduled, because that may change very quickly.
Air traffic controllers were under a lot of strain even before this shutdown. Can you speak to their situation?
This is really tough for air traffic controllers nationwide. There has been a long-standing shortage of air traffic controllers in pockets of the country, but more broadly nationwide. And so, when you layer in not just the fact that many of them are being overworked in some cases — or just don't have enough resources in their individual offices across the country — with the fact that as of this week, they're getting their last partial paycheck; and now they're being asked repeatedly to report to work for no pay, it's not a fun place to be. My heart goes out to all of them.
Are there staffing shortages amongst TSA workers or K9 handlers? Or concerns there might be soon?
So far, we really haven't seen this. But if you think back to the last big federal government shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019, that really was the pressure point that, in some ways, brought that shutdown to an end. We started to see mass sick-outs of TSA workers who had gone unpaid for more than three weeks at that point.
And so, I do think the longer that the shutdown drags on, it's really only a matter of time before we start to see cascading problems with staffing — obviously at air traffic control, as we've already seen, but definitely that will begin to spread to TSA agents. If you want to talk about a thankless, underpaid workforce, TSA agents are about as much of a thankless, low-paying job as you can get in the travel system.
