(UNITED STATES) U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that parts of U.S. airspace could be closed as soon as next week if the federal government shutdown drags on, saying mounting air traffic controller shortages are pushing the system toward a breaking point. In a tense press conference on Tuesday, Duffy framed the scenario as an operational necessity rather than a political threat, a last-resort response to a workforce that he said is working without pay, under strain, and increasingly unable to keep flights moving safely.
“None of us can manage missing two paychecks. So if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You will see mass cancellations. And you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have air traffic controllers,” Duffy said.
His comments, delivered on the shutdown’s 36th day, were the clearest signal yet that the cascading effects of unpaid labor and rising absenteeism among controllers may soon force an airspace closure in targeted regions to protect safety and manage traffic flow.
The warning came as flight disruptions rippled across the country. On Tuesday, about 4,200 flights were delayed and 150 canceled, with major choke points at Ronald Reagan Washington National, Boston Logan, Chicago O’Hare, and New York’s LaGuardia. Federal officials said the delays were tied to staffing shortages worsened by the shutdown and calls from exhausted employees who have not received pay since late October, when the Federal Aviation Administration last issued wages.
The FAA reports approximately 13,000 air traffic controllers are working without pay, and in one of the most acute signs of system stress, about 80% in New York called off on Friday due to the shutdown. Duffy said controllers “have bills to pay, and they are being forced to make decisions and choices. Do they go to work as an air traffic controller, or do they have to find a different job to get resources, money, to put food on their table, to put gas in their car?” The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has reported many controllers are now working 10-hour shifts, six days a week, a workload that raises safety concerns the longer it continues.
Duffy has argued that the situation has become untenable as the shutdown pushes deeper into a second missed pay cycle. FAA employees missed a paycheck on October 28; the next is due next Tuesday, which he cast as a decisive threshold for whether people can afford to keep reporting to duty. “But with this shutdown, it would be dishonest to say that more risk is not injected into the system. There is more risk in the system,” he said, acknowledging what many aviation experts have warned: fatigue, stress, and uncertainty tend to degrade performance in complex systems that depend on fast decisions and precise coordination.
His remarks touched off immediate debate on Capitol Hill over whether his statement amounted to a prediction or a threat. Duffy insisted it was a warning grounded in operational reality, not political posturing. He also walked back previous rhetoric that critics saw as punitive toward federal workers, clarifying,
“They need support, they need money, they need a paycheck. They don’t need to be fired.”
He said the FAA and the Department of Transportation want to avoid any form of mass sick-out and keep as much of the system running as safely as possible, but added that the math may soon no longer work if staffing thins further.
Mike McCormick, a former FAA air traffic control overseer, said the possibility of closing airspace due to controller shortages should be understood as a standard safety measure used in other situations, like when severe weather or equipment failures make parts of airspace unsafe or unmanageable. He described the logic as comparable in practice: reduce the volume of traffic, or even halt it in a defined area, to maintain safety margins and avoid overloading the people and technology that keep aircraft separated. His explanation bolstered Duffy’s argument that an airspace closure, if ordered, would be a last-ditch move to preserve safety standards rather than a political tactic.
The impact of any airspace closure would most likely be felt first in the busiest corridors, where staffing is tight and delays stack quickly across the network. New York’s airspace, which includes some of the country’s most complex and congested routes, has already shown signs of strain with the high rate of callouts. The ripple effects would spread from airports like LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy to hubs in Boston, Washington, Chicago, and beyond, pushing airlines to cancel flights preemptively and reroute others onto less crowded paths. That could mean longer flight times, rolling delays, and missed connections even at airports far from the initial closure zone.
Both Duffy and the air traffic controllers union have urged workers not to coordinate mass sick-outs, a tactic that could accelerate a crunch and force a swift shutdown of airspace segments. At the same time, officials acknowledge the mounting pressure on a workforce asked to handle heavy traffic while watching bills pile up. The union has warned for days that extended 10-hour shifts across six-day work weeks are unsustainable, particularly without the pay that normally supports overtime and retention. Duffy’s remarks placed a firm temporal mark on the risk, tying it to the second missed paycheck next week and underscoring the system’s reliance on the daily willingness of skilled professionals to keep showing up.
The political fight shows no sign of easing. Duffy and Republican leaders blame Democrats for the shutdown, accusing them of refusing to pass spending legislation that would keep agencies funded and workers paid. Democrats counter that Republicans must negotiate over healthcare spending and other priorities before funding is restored. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries stated: “We will not support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people.” The deadlock has left aviation officials juggling public safety, worker welfare, and a paralyzed budget process with no immediate end in sight.
For travelers, the numbers on Tuesday were a warning of what could become routine if staffing deteriorates further: about 4,200 delays and 150 cancellations in a single day, concentrated at hubs that drive national traffic patterns. If those numbers climb and operations slip into a pattern of rolling restrictions, airlines will likely respond by thinning schedules in hard-hit markets, swapping larger planes to consolidate capacity, and leaving buffer space in flight banks to absorb delays. The immediate pain would be missed meetings, delayed holidays, and disrupted cargo shipments; the longer-term cost would be lost revenue for carriers and airports and exhausted crews forced to absorb more irregular operations.
The FAA’s roughly 13,000 controllers are a small workforce that exerts a large influence on the broader economy. Each of them is trained for years to handle specific sectors of the sky, often in specialized facilities where local knowledge and team familiarity are essential to safety. Replacing them, even temporarily, is not simple. Duffy’s argument that an airspace closure could be unavoidable stems from the reality that air traffic control is not easily scalable when trained personnel step away. Unlike other federal functions that can slow down without immediate public risk, the margin for error in the national airspace system is slim, and the consequences of fatigue or short staffing can be severe.
Duffy’s remarks also carried a clear message to Congress: the political stalemate has migrated from budget spreadsheets into radar rooms and control towers. In the 36th day of the shutdown, the Transportation Department is trying to safeguard a high-reliability system in which a single point of failure can have outsized consequences. The secretary’s language was stark—“you will see mass chaos” and “you may see us close certain parts of the airspace”—but the argument was framed as a forecast of operational necessity if the shutdown continues to starve the workforce of pay next week.
The scenario he laid out would follow established procedures for managing risk. As McCormick explained, shutting or constraining airspace for safety reasons is not unusual in the face of severe thunderstorms, runway incidents, or power outages. Controllers and managers work with airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to meter departures and arrivals, reroute flights around bottlenecks, and assign ground delays that prevent gridlock in the skies. In this case, staffing itself would be the trigger for a similar set of tools, possibly escalating to closures where too few qualified controllers are available to keep traffic moving safely.
Tuesday’s disruptions fed frustration among passengers and crews who have started to plan around uncertainty, building in extra time for connections and bracing for last-minute changes. The list of airports most affected—Ronald Reagan Washington National, Boston Logan, Chicago O’Hare, and LaGuardia—covers key nodes for government travel, financial hubs, and cross-border connections. As the week progresses, airline operations teams will watch staffing reports from air traffic facilities as closely as weather predictions, knowing that a cascade of callouts can undo a day’s schedule in minutes.
Duffy’s public shift in tone toward the workforce was notable. Earlier hardline comments drew criticism from union leaders and Democratic lawmakers who argued that blaming controllers for absenteeism while they worked without pay was both unfair and counterproductive. On Tuesday he said plainly:
“They need support, they need money, they need a paycheck. They don’t need to be fired.”
His aides said the secretary’s focus is on keeping as much of the system open as possible, and that he sees the second missed paycheck as the point at which voluntary attendance could dip sharply, making some level of airspace closure unavoidable.
The shutdown’s reach is evident in the staffing at key facilities, especially in New York. The reported 80% callout on Friday sent shockwaves through the airline operations community, which watches New York’s performance as a bellwether. When delays hit LaGuardia or JFK early in the day, they can ripple through afternoon banks at hubs like Chicago O’Hare and Dallas, and push the West Coast into late-evening arrivals. Tuesday’s 4,200 delays and 150 cancellations, while manageable in a sprawling system, illustrate how quickly performance can degrade when stress mounts in the busiest corridors.
In Congress, the debate over responsibility hardened as Duffy’s warning dominated the day’s transportation headlines. Republicans said Democrats were ignoring the costs of inaction, while Democrats said Republicans were trying to jam through a spending bill that shortchanges healthcare priorities. Jeffries’s line—“We will not support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people”—captured the stalemate. For the aviation system, the details of that fight matter less than whether funding resumes before controllers hit a second missed payday on next Tuesday, the moment Duffy tied to potential airspace restrictions.
The air traffic controllers union has told members to avoid organized sick-outs even as it documents the strain of 10-hour shifts across six-day weeks. Union leaders say they share Duffy’s goal of safety first but argue the only real fix is to pay the workforce and end the shutdown. Former officials like McCormick have tried to lower the political temperature by describing an airspace closure as a routine safety decision scaled to staffing, akin to how managers react to a radar outage or a thunderstorm line that blocks approaches.
For now, the timetable is short and the stakes are high. If enough controllers continue to report, airports will muddle through with delays and cancellations concentrated at the biggest hubs. If attendance dips after next Tuesday, Duffy’s department could designate specific sectors for reduced operations or temporary closure to keep the system within safe limits. Either way, the collision between politics and aviation will be felt by passengers queuing at security, pilots waiting for wheels-up slots, and families checking arrival boards as the shutdown extends its grip over the nation’s airways.
The question that hovered over Duffy’s press conference—prediction or threat—may matter less than the claims he was willing to make on the record. He said the purpose was to warn Congress of consequences, not to strong-arm controllers or airlines. He added that the current posture is to avoid coordinated absences and keep crews on position as long as safety allows, but repeated that the system cannot run indefinitely without pay. “None of us can manage missing two paychecks,” he said at the outset, and returned to the point again and again: if the shutdown does not end before the second missed payday, an airspace closure somewhere in the United States becomes not only possible, but, in his view, likely.
This Article in a Nutshell
On the 36th day of the federal shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that targeted U.S. airspace closures could occur as soon as next week if funding does not resume. The FAA reports about 13,000 controllers working without pay and severe staffing strains—New York saw an 80% callout on Friday. Tuesday’s disruptions included roughly 4,200 delays and 150 cancellations at major airports. Duffy characterized any closure as a safety-driven operational step tied to a second missed paycheck and urged Congress to act to avoid escalating risks.
