“Essential” federal workers — including the nation’s air traffic controllers — are in week two of working without pay thanks to the government shutdown.
Atlanta’s air traffic control system, home to the world’s busiest airport, hasn’t seen major staffing issues or flight delays related to the shutdown at this time, according to Dan McCabe, Southern regional vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union.
But controllers also haven’t yet missed a paycheck. Their first partial one is set to arrive Oct. 14, with a zero paycheck scheduled for Oct. 28 unless the shutdown ends, he said.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC the Atlanta-based carrier has not seen “any real impact at all” when it comes to delays and on-time arrivals from the shutdown.
“I would say if this doesn’t get resolved beyond another 10 days or so, you probably will start to see some impacts,” he said. “Remember, no one has lost a paycheck yet.”
A Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spokesperson also confirmed its operations remain normal, as it heads into an expected busy holiday travel weekend for Columbus Day.
Hartsfield-Jackson, already the world’s busiest airport, is expecting particularly heavy volumes of travelers Thursday and even more Friday, when 115,000 people are expected to pass through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints in Atlanta.
Although there have been reports of callouts from work at other air traffic control locations across the country, which McCabe couldn’t comment on directly, he said he suspects some of the staffing tightness is just what the industry deals with every day given a nationwide controller shortage.
“We deal with these peaks and valleys in staffing on a daily basis, across the country,” McCabe said. There is just a “hyper focus” on it right now.
A Federal Aviation Administration air route traffic control center in Hampton that handles en route traffic had a staffing constraint on Tuesday, according to an advisory. But McCabe, who works at that center, said he wasn’t aware of staffing issues in Georgia related to the shutdown specifically.
Regardless of shutdowns, he said, many air traffic control facilities have been operating at less than full staffing.
Still, McCabe said, he’s not worried about whether people will show up during the shutdown.
“The controllers are going to come to work. They’re going to do the same job, they’re going to do the same level of service as they did two weeks ago when there was no shutdown,” he said.
But what McCabe is worried about is how the stress of working without pay will affect his colleagues’ ability to focus.
“My worry is for the human side of things,” he said. “You’re putting a lot of stress on people that are in a stress-heavy job. Unnecessary stress.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
During the 35-day shutdown during President Donald Trump’s first term, he recalled, some controllers took on second jobs after their shifts to pay their bills.
“Back then the morale was bad,” he said. “Everybody I think felt like a pawn. It was really, really bad. Just a hopeless feeling.”
“You don’t want those people after they got off a shift … now they’re going to drive an Uber, or they’re going to work at some kind of a shop. We don’t want that," he said.
Given the nationwide controller shortage, it “doesn’t take much” to disrupt a building’s staffing levels, he said.
At some locations, a handful of callouts for anything from a sick child to a broken bone can have a hefty impact, he said.
Andrella Kenner, president of CI² Aviation ,which operates 27 contract air traffic control locations in the South on behalf of the FAA, said their contract is funded through the end of the month.
Her employees are continuing to show up to work, she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I’ll be glad when the shutdown is over and we can all get back, but you know right now, it’s business as usual, and nothing’s changed. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do, providing safe air travel,” she said.
AJC staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi contributed to this article.
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