PolitiFact: Those claims about sequester-related flight delays? They seem likely

“There’s going to be a slowdown and delays in flights” as a result of the sequester.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood during an interview Monday on MSNBC

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President Barack Obama and his Cabinet secretaries are running a full-court press warning Americans about the consequences of sequestration and goading Republicans to help end it.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made the rounds on political talk shows and appeared at a White House news conference. He said the sweeping spending cuts would force the Federal Aviation Administration to furlough employees, and that would mean headaches for travelers.

“There’s going to be a slowdown and delays in flights,” he said on MSNBC on Feb. 25.

We have examined claims about how sequestration would affect a variety of federal services in areas such as child care and criminal prosecutions. In many cases, the warnings from the Obama administration portrayed worst-case scenarios. That was the case with air travel, too.

Cuts, then furloughs

Sequestration would force the FAA to carve $600 million from its budget, and LaHood says furloughing air traffic controllers was the last step after every other cut was made.

But air traffic controllers make up a big chunk of the FAA’s workforce: 15,000 of its 47,000 employees.

“We’re looking at everything possible; and everything possible that’s legal, we will do,” LaHood said at the White House. That includes cutting travel, cutting overtime, freezing hiring, canceling conferences and reducing contracts.

Low-traffic airports were also a main target for cutbacks. The FAA identified about 250 less-used airports and could shut down 100 or so of those towers completely. Airport operators could choose to staff the towers in other ways in order to keep the airports open.

But ultimately, officials say, sequestration would leave little room for flexibility.

“The sequester language does not allow us to move funding from account to account, and we simply can’t make the required cuts without facility closures and furloughs,” DOT spokesman Justin Nisly told PolitiFact.

‘Controllable event’

It may not be time to cancel your vacations plans yet, though.

Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst, said much of the real effect of the sequester is unknown.

“We don’t know whether airlines will cancel flights and, if so, how many, the routes, time of day, and so on,” he said.

Even with those unknowns, the FAA has wiggle room.

“I view this as a ‘controllable’ event, in that government is opting to reduce the number of on-duty air traffic controllers and TSA airport security screening officers rather than take other steps to manage their reduced budgets,” Harteveldt said. “I distinguish this from an ‘uncontrollable’ event, like 9/11.”

Sequestration does not allow federal agencies to shift money between departments — say delaying an equipment order to keep paying air traffic controllers. But they can still prioritize under their reduced budget, cutting more deeply in administrative staff or contracting staff.

“They’re not moving money, but they have some flexibility in where the reductions would take place,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former airline pilot.

And precedent, he said, points to some insulation for air traffic controllers.

“There are certain essential jobs that get funded regardless,” Cox said. “Air traffic controllers are very high on the list of priorities.”

90 whole minutes?

About that groan-worthy notion of 90-minute delays in major cities: Nisly said officials asked district managers at airports how they would manage furloughs and what the impact would be. They found that at many airports, the work of getting airplanes to take off and land safely couldn’t function at full capacity if there were furloughs.

That means “delays of up to 90 minutes during peak hours for travelers to major cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco,” Nisly said.

Erik Hansen, director of domestic policy at the U.S. Travel Association, which promotes increased travel to and within the United States, said sequestration will inevitably make an already cumbersome process worse.

“This could be the one place that most Americans see the impact of sequestration,” Hansen said. “It’s going to have a real impact on communities and the defense industry, but I think for everyday Americans — we have almost 2 million people fly in the country every day. We’re going to have a lot of people understand quickly the impact.”

Our ruling

LaHood warned that once sequestration hit, travelers would experience flight delays.