80% of NYC-area air traffic controllers Absent as FAA warns of surge

(NEW YORK) Nearly 80% of air traffic controllers at New York-area facilities were absent as of late Friday, October 31, 2025, after a “surge in callouts” during an ongoing government shutdown that has stretched to 31 days, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in an operations advisory posted Friday night on X. The agency warned that staffing shortages at key facilities in the Northeast are triggering widespread ripple effects across the national airspace system, with delays and cancellations likely through the weekend as managers cut traffic flows to maintain safety.

The FAA said

“nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks, ensuring the safety of more than 50,000 daily operations across the national airspace system.”
It added:
“As we head into this weekend, a surge in callouts is straining staffing levels at multiple facilities, leading to widespread impacts across the NAS. Currently, half of our Core 30 facilities are experiencing staffing shortages, and nearly 80% of air traffic controllers are absent at New York-area facilities.”
The agency described frontline air traffic controllers as being under “immense stress and fatigue” after going more than four weeks without pay and called for an end to the shutdown to stabilize staffing and ease disruptions for travelers.

The warning came from the FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center, which issues national advisories when operational constraints threaten to choke the flow of flights. It flagged “staffing triggers” at major control sectors, including the New York Center, Area D, a high-altitude control sector that handles a dense mix of domestic and international traffic funneling in and out of the Northeast corridor. When staffing falls below minimums, supervisors meter traffic volume into affected sectors and airports, a safety-first measure that pushes departure times back, increases airborne holding, and can cascade into cancellations when crews time out or aircraft miss slots.

The immediate pressure points are the big city hubs strung along the Northeast corridor, where heavy traffic volumes and ongoing runway maintenance collide with thin schedules in control rooms. The command center said New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C. are most at risk for delays in the coming days, with bottlenecks likely to build through peak bank times when arrivals and departures compress into narrow windows. Airlines typically respond by consolidating flights, swapping to larger aircraft, or rerouting around constrained airspace, but those workarounds are limited when multiple adjacent facilities signal staffing shortages at the same time.

Friday’s advisory underscored how the government shutdown is compounding long-standing staffing shortages inside the air traffic workforce. A 2024 report found staffing deficits at high-volume facilities accounted for about 40% of system-wide delays, a chronic shortfall that has left managers with less cushion when unexpected sick calls or family emergencies hit a shift roster. Training new controllers is a multi-year process that moves candidates from classroom instruction to simulators to live traffic under the supervision of certified trainers. The FAA has accelerated training and reassigned personnel to the busiest units over the past year, but it has warned it could take years to rebuild the workforce to pre-pandemic levels.

The federal shutdown has lasted 31 days, leaving thousands of federal employees, including air traffic controllers, working without pay. The financial strain is now intersecting with operational risk.

“After 31 days without pay, air traffic controllers are under immense stress and fatigue,” the agency said.
That stress can translate into more callouts, particularly on weekends and overnight shifts that already struggle to fill rosters. With nearly 80% of air traffic controllers absent at New York-area facilities on Friday, the FAA’s managers had little choice but to restrict traffic flows and prioritize safety-critical operations.

The New York Center, Area D, sits at the heart of a particularly complex airspace where high-altitude routes overlap like threads in a loom. When that sector cuts capacity, the effect ripples across routes linking the Midwest and Atlantic seaboard to Europe, as well as up and down the eastern seaboard. Even a moderate reduction can force miles-in-trail restrictions that stretch en route separation and slow the cadence of arrivals into the New York metropolitan area and beyond. With half of the FAA’s Core 30 facilities reporting staffing shortages, the usual tactic of rerouting traffic into less congested hubs becomes harder to deploy.

Passengers are likely to feel the squeeze most acutely at Northeast airports as the weekend travel rush builds. The FAA recommends checking flight status at https://www.fly.faa.gov/ and allowing extra time at airports over the holiday weekend. Airlines also issue real-time alerts through apps and text messages, but the agency’s central site offers a national view of traffic management initiatives, including ground delay programs, ground stops, and en route flow restrictions that can add hours to a trip even when the weather is clear.

Air traffic controllers guide aircraft from takeoff to landing across towers, terminal radar approach control facilities (TRACONs), and en route centers. Each segment requires trained specialists, and staffing shortages in any one leg can limit the system’s overall throughput. When towers or TRACONs cannot accept the usual number of arrivals, centers must meter inbound flights and hold outbound departures on the ground. The FAA said it reduces air traffic flow when staffing falls below minimums to maintain safety, a formal practice that can cause visible delays as pilots wait for a release time and passengers watch departure boards flip from on time to delayed or canceled.

The agency’s language on Friday night conveyed urgency as well as fatigue. It emphasized the sheer scale of the mission still underway despite the lack of pay:

“Nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks, ensuring the safety of more than 50,000 daily operations across the national airspace system.”
That workload includes commercial flights, cargo operations, business jets, and general aviation, all of which depend on the same controllers and radar scopes. With more than 50,000 daily operations to sequence and separate, even small mismatches between scheduled demand and available staffing can create long queues that spill into the next hour’s bank.

The concentration of absenteeism in New York raises the risk of knock-on effects far from the Northeast. Flights that miss arrival slots in the New York area can lose onward connections, backing up crews and aircraft in other regions as airlines try to re-thread itineraries. Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C. are facing similar staffing shortages, according to the FAA, and those added constraints make it harder to divert traffic as relief. When half of the busiest Core 30 facilities are under staffing pressure at once, the buffer the system relies on to absorb shocks is thin.

While the FAA has not named individual air traffic controllers, it acknowledged the toll on its workforce and tied it directly to the stoppage of pay.

“After 31 days without pay, air traffic controllers are under immense stress and fatigue,” the statement said.
The agency has urged a quick end to the shutdown so furloughed personnel can return and those working without pay can be compensated. It has also flagged that trainees and support staff are part of the pipeline needed to stabilize operations and that prolonged disruptions can slow the pace of certifications and transfers that help relieve pinch points at high-volume facilities.

Travelers considering rebooking may see limited alternatives when staffing shortages are system-wide. Carriers often cluster flights in peak periods to maximize connectivity, but those peaks are precisely when traffic managers impose the steepest reductions. If staffing improves during off-peak hours, airlines sometimes add “recovery” flights, but crew duty limits and aircraft positioning can constrain that option, especially when disruptions stretch over several days. With the FAA signaling that multiple facilities will remain under strain through the weekend, passengers may face rolling delays rather than a single day of disruption.

The FAA’s advisory reflects a familiar tension in the national airspace system: balancing safety margins with the commercial imperative to move people and goods on schedule. By preemptively restricting flows when staffing falls short, the agency is betting that deliberate slowdowns now will prevent riskier, last-minute interventions later. For air traffic controllers, the choice can be stark—take on more traffic than the room can safely handle or hold lines on the ground and in the air until the team is strong enough to work the push. The FAA made clear which path it was taking as it sought to steer the system through the shutdown’s 31st day.

For now, the agency’s advice to the public is plain. Check https://www.fly.faa.gov/ before heading to the airport and build in extra time, especially for trips through New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C. The combination of staffing shortages, heavy traffic volumes, and runway maintenance in the Northeast is a volatile mix even in fair weather. With “nearly 80% of air traffic controllers” absent at New York-area facilities on Friday and “half of our Core 30 facilities” reporting shortages, the FAA’s own words point to a weekend of disruption unless the roster rebounds quickly and the government shutdown breaks.