Airline industry feeling shutdown pinch

Airline workers at the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport. (Times archive)

While some government employees have been furloughed until the government re-opens, those deemed “essential workers” have been expected to continue working as usual during the shutdown — without pay. Included in this list of essential workers are air transportation positions such as air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees. As a result, many airports and flights nationwide are feeling an impact from the ongoing government shutdown.

“We haven’t seen any [flight] delays here on the ground [in Gunnison] as of yet,” Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport Manager Rick Lamport said. 

According to Lamport, the Gunnison airport has no control towers, meaning there haven’t been any air traffic controllers affected locally. This is fairly typical for small rural airports like GUC. Air traffic control for flights traveling into or out of GUC are handled by the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center, a Federal Aviation Administration facility located in Longmont, Colorado. 

In Colorado, some of the hubs for air traffic controllers are Denver, Grand Junction, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Buckley Air Force Base, as well as a few other locations around the front range and Rocky Mountains. 

“Many of these impacts come from [flight] volume,” Lamport said. “We’ve only got two flights per day.” 

While airport operations at GUC have remained largely unaffected by the shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday that the U.S. might be forced to close parts of its airspace if staffing shortages due to the government shutdown continue. The shutdown, which is entering its second month, has led to a shortage of anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 air traffic controllers, according to Duffy. 

“You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it, because we don’t have the air traffic controllers,” Duffy said in a press conference.

Such impacts  are projected to increase the longer the shutdown continues. 

“While the vast majority of our nationwide operations remain minimally impacted by the government shutdown, occasional delays are to be expected,”  stated a TSA press release. “The longer the shutdown goes on, the more severe the impact on our TSA workforce who have expenses they must pay for, making it harder to show up for work when not being paid.”

(Gia Wright can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or jwright@orourkemediagroup.com.)