{"id":38249,"date":"2025-11-10T07:42:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T07:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/one-number-shows-how-hard-the-government-shutdown-has-hit-travel-in-the-uss-biggest-flight-hub\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T07:42:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T07:42:20","slug":"one-number-shows-how-hard-the-government-shutdown-has-hit-travel-in-the-uss-biggest-flight-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/one-number-shows-how-hard-the-government-shutdown-has-hit-travel-in-the-uss-biggest-flight-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"One number shows how hard the government shutdown has hit travel in the US&#8217;s biggest flight hub"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69117f8a62a04500b3160ca1?format=jpeg\" alt=\"People check the flight status board Sunday, November 9, 2025 in concourse B of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia.\"\/><figcaption>Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was one of the 40 US airports that saw its air traffic reduced by 10% during the government shutdown.<\/p>\n<p>James D. DeCamp\/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Atlanta&#039;s airport has been hit hard by the government shutdown.<\/li>\n<li>Sean Duffy said 18 out of its 22 air traffic controllers did not turn up for work on Saturday.<\/li>\n<li>The FAA cut 10% of flights at the US&#039;s 40 busiest airports to ensure safety during the shutdown.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Atlanta&#039;s airport, the busiest flight hub in the country, is struggling to stay afloat during the longest government shutdown in US history.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with CNN&#039;s Jake Tapper on Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that &quot;18 of 22 controllers in Atlanta didn&#039;t show up&quot; for work on Saturday. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;We had 81 staffing triggers throughout the national airspace yesterday \u2014 that means controllers weren&#039;t coming to work,&quot; Duffy said. &quot;To answer your question, it&#039;s only going to get worse.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He said that two weeks before Thanksgiving, air travel would be &quot;reduced to a trickle&quot; and people who want to go home to see their families might not be able to.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly, if this thing doesn&#039;t open back up,&quot; Duffy added.<\/p>\n<p>Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was the busiest airport in the world in 2024, serving more than 108 million passengers, according to a report by the Airports Council International.<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of flights have been canceled across the country daily since Friday, after Duffy announced that he would be temporarily reducing flight traffic by 10% at 40 high-traffic airports in the US.<\/p>\n<p>Per the flight tracking website FlightRadar24, over the weekend, there were about 4,500 flight cancellations and more than 17,800 flight delays, within, into, or out of the United States. <\/p>\n<p>The FAA told Business Insider in a statement that Duffy and the FAA&#039;s administrator, Bryan Bedford, had reduced air traffic as a &quot;proactive&quot; step to keep the national airspace safe during the shutdown.<\/p>\n<p>The FAA added that controllers working without pay &quot;has resulted in increased reports of strain on the system from both pilots and air traffic controllers.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>According to a shutdown plan released by the Department of Transportation on September 30, 13,000 air traffic controllers are having to work without pay during the shutdown.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday night, lawmakers got one step closer to ending the shutdown, with the majority of the Senate voting to advance a spending package that would reopen the government.<\/p>\n<p>The shutdown will not end immediately \u2014 the measure now has to be debated in the Senate and then approved by the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was one of the 40 US airports that saw its air traffic reduced by 10% during the government shutdown. James D. DeCamp\/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect Atlanta&#039;s airport has been hit hard by the government shutdown. Sean Duffy said 18 out of its 22 air traffic controllers did not turn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}