Air Travel Misery Worsens as Chicago Storm Adds to Shutdown Mess

(Bloomberg) — More than 5,500 flights in the US were delayed or canceled on Sunday as snowy weather in Chicago added to the stress facing airlines on the third day of US government-mandated restrictions on air travel.

The bottlenecks were worst at Newark Liberty International Airport where about 29% of departures were delayed and 19% of flights canceled, according to FlightAware. By late morning in New York, 3,651 flights were delayed and 1,855 were canceled nationwide.

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Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport also faced hundreds of delays and cancellations as the winter’s first snow moved into the airport, a major hub for United Airlines and American Airlines. About 127 flights were canceled at Delta Air Lines Inc.’s home base at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. In all, about 5% of US airline flights were canceled on Sunday, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics provider.

The latest snarls — and misery for air travelers trying to navigate an air system with little slack — comes after the Federal Aviation Administration put into effect an operations plan overnight with 37 separate staffing triggers, according to a social media post by Flightradar24. The agency is modifying traffic by rerouting flights or reducing arrivals and departures based on the numbers of available air traffic controllers.

The stress on the US national air traffic system will continue to grow ahead of the busy Thanksgiving travel season if the ongoing shutdown forces controllers to continue working without paychecks, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned.

“As we get closer to Thanksgiving travel, I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have air travel slow to a trickle as everyone wants to travel to see their families,” Duffy told “I think we’re going to see air traffic controllers, very few of them coming to work.”

Airport operations in Newark were already stressed by shortages of controllers to direct traffic through one of the busiest and most complex travel corridors prior to the shutdown. The US has struggled with hiring shortfalls in its control towers for decades.

The staffing issues have been in the spotlight since a helicopter collided with a passenger jet landing at Washington’s Reagan National Airport in January. And they’re at the heart of restrictions put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration that will squeeze operations at the 40 busiest airports, with eventually as many as 10% of flights being cut.