‘Fortunately, I made it.’ Shutdown anxiety continues at Atlanta airport.
As a possible solution to the federal shutdown made its way through the Senate on Monday, travelers at the world’s busiest airport continued to encounter reverberations from flight cuts mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines announced at noon on Monday it had canceled about 280 Delta and 215 Delta Connection flights for the day out of more than 5,200 scheduled.
It said it had completed cancellations for Wednesday, though the figures had not yet appeared in flight tracking data as of 12:30 p.m. Cancellations for Tuesday were not available by midday Monday.
Monday also marked the second zero dollar paycheck for air traffic controllers since the shutdown began, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association Nick Daniels told reporters Monday morning.
“For decades, air traffic controllers have held the line,” Daniels said.
“They have kept their focus, their composure and their commitment to safety. But now, they must focus on child care instead of traffic flows. Food for their families instead of runway separation.”
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy told CNN on Sunday that 18 of 22 controllers at the Atlanta air traffic control tower called out sick for work on Saturday. They had 81 short staffing alerts across the national airspace, he said.
Delta canceled more than 380 flights Saturday because of controller staffing and thunderstorms in Atlanta.
On Monday, more than 220 flights overall across all airlines were canceled out of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as of 12:30 p.m. Monday, according to FlightAware.com.
The FAA said last week the capacity reductions to address controller staffing tightness would start at 4% last Friday, increase to 6% Tuesday, 8% by Thursday and 10% by this Friday.
Duffy predicted air travel will be “reduced to a trickle,” if nothing changes during Thanksgiving. “There are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up.”
American travelers have been left scrambling to try to keep their travel plans together.
Norah Whitten’s travel plans were upended when Frontier canceled her original 6 a.m. Monday flight out of Raleigh-Durham because of the FAA’s order.
Whitten, 34, was traveling to Atlanta for a work trip and was on the shuttle from the airport’s parking lot to the terminal when she saw Frontier’s email informing her of the cancellation. She saw Delta Air Lines had a few seats left on a flight taking off that morning, so she went to the airline’s counter to buy a new ticket.
“I mean, I had to buy a new flight, which was more expensive than my original one, but worth it to just get here,” she said.
She is in Atlanta until Wednesday and is hoping her flight back to North Carolina takes off as scheduled.
“There’s nothing I can do about it right now. If it happens, I’ll just figure it out,” she said.
Even if Congress strikes a deal to end the shutdown, the challenges for controllers will not let up immediately, Daniels said. In 2019, it took two to two and a half months for controllers to be made whole for their unpaid work, he said.
Daniels told the stories of some of his members. One, he said, just moved to Illinois for training, has sold plasma twice, started delivering for DoorDash and recently took a part-time job on her one weekly day off.
“These are real people,” Daniels said. “They deserve better and they absolutely deserve their pay.”
The shutdown is having a real effect on controllers’ ability to focus on an extremely intensive job, he said.
“The added stress leads to fatigue,” he said. “The fatigue has led to the erosion of safety and increased risk every day that this shutdown drags on.”
Chris Reep is a controller at the Atlanta tower and legislative representative for the union.
He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this month: “We just try to do the best we can. But if somebody needs to take some time because they’re not 100%, that’s fine. I don’t blame them for that.”
The effects on controllers’ recruiting pipeline are long-term. Newly-trained graduates of their academy are quitting, Daniels said.
Retirees who had agreed to stay on longer are stepping out of the workforce, Duffy said. “This is going to live on in air travel well beyond the time frame that this government opens back up,” Duffy said.
Kelly Hanretta woke up Monday morning around 3:30 a.m. to a text from Delta that her 9 a.m. flight from New Orleans home to Atlanta had been canceled and there was no flight to rebook her on.
“I immediately looked and literally just went into overdrive,” Hanretta, 52, said.
Delta didn’t give a reason for the cancellation but when Hanretta saw the text, she grabbed all her stuff, hopped in a taxi and headed to the airport to talk directly with an agent.
She was able to fly standby for a 5:22 a.m. flight.
“There were like 15 people on the standby list, so a few of us got on and everybody else was getting moved to the next flight,” she said.
“Fortunately, I made it. I’m here.”
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi contributed reporting.
About the Authors
As a business reporter, Emma Hurt leads coverage of the Atlanta airport, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Norfolk Southern and other travel and logistics companies. Prior to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she worked as an editor and Atlanta reporter for Axios, a politics reporter for WABE News and a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Mirtha Donastorg is a reporter on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s business team focusing on Black wealth, entrepreneurship, and minority-owned businesses as well as innovation at Atlanta’s HBCUs.
