Travelers experienced U.S. flight delays on Monday as air-traffic
controllers started taking furloughs required under federal-sequester budget cuts,
officials said.
"It will make flying on a normal day seem like you're flying in blizzard
weather," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking at New York's LaGuardia Airport,
said of the nation's most congested facilities on a normal day.
The furloughs, which began Sunday but didn't cause many delays because of light
air travel, are tied to $85 billion in across-the-board cuts known as the
sequester. Flight delays of approximately one hour were reported at several major U.S. airports.
The Federal Aviation Administration told the nation's airlines last week some
6,700 flights a day, or nearly a third of all U.S. flights, could be delayed at
13 of the busiest U.S. airports.
The delays would come from planes being held on the ground before takeoff or
slowed while en route to destinations, the FAA said.
The most-affected airports would likely be Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Chicago
O'Hare, Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Kennedy
International and LaGuardia in New York, and Los Angeles International, FAA
Administrator Michael Huerta told reporters Friday.
Other likely affected airports were Charlotte (N.C.) Douglas, Chicago Midway,
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (Fla.), Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego and San
Francisco, he said.
Delays at all the big airports likely will ripple to other airports, Huerta
said.
The furloughs for the Transportation Department's 55,000 employees -- including
47,000 FAA employees, most of whom are air-traffic controllers -- require a day
off without pay for every 10 workdays, or a total of 11 days off, through the
end of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
The FAA said in a statement Sunday it would "be working with the airlines and
using a comprehensive set of air traffic management tools to minimize the delay
impacts of lower staffing as we move into the busy summer travel season."
Besides ground stops and ground-delay programs, delays might "also result from
other traffic management initiatives, such as increasing spacing between
planes," the agency said.
"We cannot allow these furloughs to go through," Schumer said Sunday,
recommending Washington instead remove tax breaks for oil companies and raise
revenue elsewhere.
"Make some sensible cuts in areas where there's much more waste than here," he
told reporters.
The Obama administration has said sequestration, part of the Budget Control Act
of 2011, permits no discretion with the budget cuts. The FAA has said the
furloughs are unavoidable.
Major U.S. airlines lost a bid in court Friday to halt the furloughs after the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a requested
emergency motion to stop them.
The Airlines for America trade group of the carriers and a leading plaintiff was
quoted in The Wall Street Journal Sunday as saying it would continue its legal
challenge through the judicial and legislative processes to stop "this needless
and illegal" plan, which affects shippers as well as passengers.
