Air Traffic Controller Furloughs Not Massively Impacting Flight Schedules

After reports flew ramped that the furloughs imposed upon air air traffic controllers, due to the government spending cuts, would cause massive delays in flight schedules, information from the Federal Aviation Administration and others showed that flying Sunday and early Monday was largely uneventful, with most flights on time.

There were delays in parts of Florida and other sun-belt states, but those were caused by thunderstorms.

Mark Duell at the flight tracking website FlightAware told USA Today "that John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York indicated delays due to lower staffing starting late Sunday evening. JFK averaged 70-minute delays for inbound flights, but no detectable departure delays. LaGuardia averaged 74-minute delays for inbound flights, and departure delays of 37 minutes."

According to the FAA website "flights from Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla., into John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Westchester County airports were delayed due to staffing issues."

A spokeswoman of the trade group Airlines for America, which represents the airlines, stated that it was "not seeing a significant impact at this point," reported USA Today.

However, in Los Angeles, the FAA said late Sunday night that "staffing cuts were causing delays averaging more than three hours for flights arriving at Los Angeles International Airport."

Airport spokesman Marshall Lowe said "about 70 flights had delays of about an hour or more Sunday, but he could not say what role the staffing cuts played in the delays," according to USA Today.

For those not aware of the furloughs, they are due to government budget cuts that kicked in last month that forced the FAA and other agencies to cut their spending.

FAA officials have said, according to USA Today, "they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees, including nearly 15,000 controllers. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty."