The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily halted flights into New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Friday due to a staffing shortage during the government shutdown,Bloombergreports.
According to the outlet, the FAA ground stopped all inbound flights at LGA — one ofAmerica’s busiest airports— after too few employees showed up to work at an air-traffic control facility in the Washington, D.C. area that impacts traffic throughout the Northeast. Friday is the 35th day of thegovernment shutdown.
The restriction was lifted at LaGuardia again at 10:37 a.m., after an hour and 22 minutes, but has caused significant residual delays for travelers.
When reaching out to the agency for comment, PEOPLE received an automated email response reading, “Due to the lapse in government funding, I am out of the office.” Another agency representative did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
On the FAA’s website’s“Flight Delay Information” map, LGA airport has a button that reads, “Due to OTHER / STAFFING, there is a Traffic Management Program in effect for traffic arriving LaGuardia Airport, New York, NY (LGA). This is causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 1 hour and 26 minutes.”
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Bloombergreports that neither the FAA nor the National Air Traffic Controllers union has directly attributed the delays to the shutdown, which is now the longest in history.
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On Jan. 17, theagency acknowledgedthey were experiencing a number of callouts, and on Thursday, the TSA said in a statement that they are experiencing more than double the normal number of call outs (a national rate of 7.6 percent of unscheduled absences compared to a 3 percent rate on this day last year), and added that “many employees are reporting that they are not able to report to work due to financial limitations.”
However, both the FAA and the TSA are maintaining that it’s safe to fly.
On Thursday, the FAA issued a statementon Twitter, writing “The traveling public can be assured that our nation’s airspace system is safe. The FAA continually reviews and analyzes its performance to assess its safety and efficiency. We remain grateful to the air traffic controllers, technicians and inspectors for their continued professionalism and dedication to their safety mission.”
source: people.com
