Flight Cuts Hit Bay Area Airports, With More to Come Over the Next Week

Flight cuts began to hit the Bay Area on Friday after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines this week to reduce travel through major U.S. airports as they deal with growing workforce strains amid the federal government shutdown.

Nearly 40 flights out of San Francisco International Airport have been canceled, along with nine through Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport, according to the airports’ spokespeople. That number could grow as airlines increase cuts from 4% Friday to 10% by the end of next week, in line with the FAA’s demand.

While travelers looking ahead to end-of-year trips will almost certainly still reach their destinations, the economic impact of holiday flight cuts could put pressure on lawmakers to reopen the federal government, said Philip Mann, an adjunct professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

“All the various economic factors that are tied to aviation travel, such as the tourism money and the money going to different cities — I think that’s where the biggest impact from this will show up: the reduction in holiday travel money getting into the economy,” he told KQED.

While the 2018–19 federal shutdown also led to major disruptions to air travel, which pressured the Trump administration to make a deal with congressional leaders to reopen the government after a little over a month, Mann said the holiday travel season was largely spared.

That funding lapse began the week of Christmas, so airport employees required to work without pay weren’t yet as fatigued.

“[When] controllers went into Christmas, they were still on a relatively normal schedule, relatively normal stress load,” Mann said.

Now, they’ve gone two paycheck cycles — more than a month — without any pay. “They’ve been at the edge of it for a while … so we’re going to see the effects of the compounded stress into the holidays,” Mann said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that as the shutdown drags into a sixth week, the specialized workers are increasingly calling out sick and missing shifts. Flight reductions, he told reporters, are necessary to prioritize safety with a limited workforce.

If the shutdown lasts until the full 10% air traffic cut takes effect next week, Mann said that could affect anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 flights on a normal day, and up to 3,500 during the holiday season.

“Whether that is sufficient to get the airlines and the airports and the cities to call their senators, call their congressmen, and get them to start moving? I don’t know,” he said. But it’s what he thinks would be necessary for air travel interruptions to be the harbinger of ending the lapse in appropriations.

“In the current political climate, I think it’ll be more the airlines and the people that make their business in air travel that are going to be able to push it over the hill and get things actually moving,” he said.

In the meantime, most fliers should still be able to reach their destinations, though they might have to deal with delays of a few hours or longer at security checkpoint lines.

Since flights are being pre-emptively canceled, airlines should be able to rebook travelers onto others and mitigate the rippling effects of canceling flights last minute, like during major weather events.

“What people will see is kind of like [what] I’ve seen because I’m traveling over the holidays. … I actually got rebooked on a different flight, but to me, it just means I just have an hour difference in my flight, it’s not like I’m not flying,” Mann said.

Those with tight schedules might want to think about cutting their travel short or waiting until uncertainty dies down.

“If somebody’s on a super, super, super tight schedule, they might want to push that holiday trip off until maybe after the shutdown’s over,” Mann said. “Or they may want to … drive if they can, or get there some other way, versus trying to get into the system with an absolutely desperate schedule. That’s just not going to be a good time for anybody.”