What Really Happens After the Shutdown Ends

"This past weekend, as I prepared to board a flight from Toronto to New York City, I looked down at my phone to find two pieces of news. One was that the Senate was readying a deal to end the ongoing government shutdown. The other was that my flight was delayed. I was lucky. Amid the broader chaos enveloping air travel in the United States these days, a delay of a couple of hours is manageable."

"Air traffic controllers have now gone without pay for 43 days, leading some to reportedly take a second job when they're off the clock; to account for fatigue and compensate for the controllers who have left their job, the Federal Aviation Administration has deployed an emergency order mandating major reductions in daily domestic flights at 40 high-traffic airports. What began as a 4 percent reduction over the weekend is now a 6 percent reduction. Thousands of flights have been outright canceled."

"All government shutdowns produce a sort of hangover period once they end, as federal employees return from furlough and attempt to triage their accumulated work. This shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, is no different. Now that the House has passed legislation to end it, certain services will return immediatelysome national parks, for example, have remained open at limited capacity throughout the shutdown in spite of staffing shortages. But flights in particular won't be running smoothly for a while."

Congress passed legislation to end the longest U.S. government shutdown, but many services will not immediately normalize. Air traffic controllers have gone without pay for 43 days, prompting some to take second jobs and causing staffing shortages and fatigue. The FAA issued an emergency order reducing daily domestic flights at 40 high-traffic airports, increasing reductions from 4 percent to 6 percent, and thousands of flights have been canceled. Federal employees returning from furlough will face a triage backlog. Some services, such as certain national parks, have operated at limited capacity, but air travel disruptions are likely to persist into the Thanksgiving travel period.

Read at www.theatlantic.com