Travel back to ‘normal’ this weekend if government reopens, Delta CEO says
If the U.S. House votes Wednesday to end the government shutdown, “I think you’ll be as close to normal as you can get by Friday or Saturday,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC Wednesday of air travel.
Thanksgiving’s busy travel season should also be fine, he predicted: “Bookings look good.”
The Atlanta-based airline has seen 2,500 cancellations in the last week between mandated capacity cuts, air traffic control staffing limitations and storms, he said, “which is a crazy amount.”
The Atlanta airport tower on Saturday reduced arrival rates to a fourth of its normal capacity because of staffing and storms, he said, just 20 flights per hour.
On Wednesday, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport saw its lowest cancellation total in days at just 77, according to FlightAware.com.
Security wait times largely remained in the single-digit minutes Wednesday as of 1:30 p.m., according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of airport data.
“Hopefully the vote occurs tonight and we get everybody back, we get people paid most importantly and by the weekend we should be in good shape,” Bastian said.
If the Senate-approved legislation to reopen the government is approved by the House, it will go to President Donald Trump for his signature.
Bastian is advocating for a law change to ensure that essential transportation safety employees, including Transportation Security Administration officers and air traffic controllers, are guaranteed pay during any future shutdowns.
“Ensure those workers — next time this happens, because it will happen — get paid,” he said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters Tuesday that controllers and other essential transportation safety employees will receive 70% of their back pay within 24-48 hours of the government reopening, and the remainder within a week.
That’s far different from 2019, when it took two and a half months for controllers to receive the entirety of their backpay, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
But Duffy on Tuesday didn’t immediately commit to a full flight schedule for the weekend.
“We’re going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel … but it depends on controllers coming back to work,” Duffy said.
FAA capacity cuts Wednesday are at 6% and set to rise to 10% by Friday.
Staffing had improved Tuesday compared to the weekend, Duffy said, perhaps because of conversations about an end to the shutdown in sight.
“I think we’re well on our way to getting to more normal air travel, less delays, less cancellations.”
When it comes to the financial impact the shutdown has had, Bastian said it would cost Delta and other airlines a “significant amount … those monies will be gone.”
It won’t wipe out the company’s expected quarterly profits, he said, but “it will have an impact across the economy.”
That being said, Bastian said while the airline “didn’t like it,” Delta understood the FAA directive was necessary.
“We had to take proactive action. The thing we didn’t like was being a political football.” he said.
About the Author
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.
