NJ travelers feeling effects of shutdown as staffing issues cause delays at Newark, LaGuardia

New Jersey experienced firsthand some of the real impacts of the federal government shutdown Friday morning as a shortage of air traffic controllers at facilities along the East Coast caused major delays to some flights trying to land and take off from Newark Liberty International Airport. 

The delays up and down the East Coast - combined with a second missed paycheck Friday for some 800,000 government workers - added intense pressure on political leaders to find a resolution to the shutdown. And by early afternoon, President Trump announced that the government would reopen for three weeks to let Congress hash out a deal to improve security at the nation's southern border.

Friday's flight delays were caused by "a slight increase in sick leave" by air traffic controllers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. 

Some passengers waiting to take off in the morning tweeted their frustration. Louis Di Paolo, a former Dumont councilman, was stuck on a JetBlue flight waiting to take of from Newark. He tweeted the plane had been waiting on the tarmac for close to two hours.

"We are mitigating the impact by augmenting staffing, rerouting traffic, and increasing spacing between aircraft when needed," according to a Tweet by the FAA.

The delays were caused by an insufficient number of air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., according to the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center.

The staffing problems Friday also caused the FAA to delay flights arriving into La Guardia Airport in New York by an average of 41 minutes, according to the command center. Operations at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York were not affected.

Some regular air travelers have started to adjust their travel behavior because of the shutdown and looming fear of delays.

Robert Nunn’s flight from Newark to Lexington, Kentucky was delayed by five hours Friday due to weather.

The rippling effects of the shutdown prompted him to arrive at the airport early, however, after a text message from United Airlines cautioned travelers of potential delays at security check-ins.

Nunn does not plan to adjust his travel plans as the shutdown drags on but said he is growing increasingly frustrated.

“It’s just getting worse,” he said. “As a traveler, it’s just really annoying. People should be able to go back to work, everything going on with that shouldn’t affect the day-to-day lives of everyone else.”

George Griffith flies every week for work. Though he has yet to be impacted by shutdown-related delays, to be safe he has started arriving at airports a bit earlier.

"It makes me get into the mindset of things are potentially going to happen,” Griffith said of the shutdown. 

He arrived at Newark airport on Friday about two and a half hours before his flight home to Charlotte, North Carolina was scheduled to take off.

Griffith said his frequent travel makes him numb to cancellations but felt sorry for families and less frequent travelers who will likely deal with similar issues as the shutdown continues.

“For me to get off a plane at 3:30 a.m. not knowing where I’m going to lay my head is the norm, my heart rate doesn’t go up but for other people, it’s a big deal,” he said. “Work is one thing, family vacations are another.”

Ryan Brandon and Eric Eccelston were among a gaggle of Philadelphia-area residents in the terminal headed to World Youth Day in Panama. They have been planning the trip for months but concerns about air travel didn’t get on Eccleston’s radar until last week. “Hopefully it will be cleared up by the time we get back,” he said.

Others responded with a shrug to the potential for continuing travel delays caused by the shutdown. Arron Parkhill, 27, and Demi Kyle, 25, just arrived from Northern Ireland for a holiday. They are visiting Manhattan, then continuing on to Las Vegas - “if all goes well,” Parkhill said. If air travel gets fouled up, they will cope. “If it happens, it happens,” he said.

New Jersey politicians were quick to use the delays Friday as debating points in the ongoing tug of war over the government shutdown. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a potential Democratic candidate for president, tweeted of the flight delays: "People's lives and livelihoods are being put at risk. The shutdown must end — now."

New Jersey's other senator, Bob Menendez, tweeted a mock flight departure board that listed, under "reason for delay" for each flight, "Trump shutdown."

Rep. Albio Sires, D-West New York, tweeted that "the shutdown has severely impacted air traffic controllers and other aviation safety specialists who are being placed in an increasingly stressful situation as the shutdown continues."

The flight delays "are further signs of a system that is breaking down, and the staff shortages that caused these delays are a direct result of the shutdown," he said. "Continuing the shutdown would put at risk the well-being of aviation workers, passengers, and the economy. Once again, we are witnessing the disastrous impacts of a shutdown that has gone on for far too long.”

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But by 11:30 a.m., Terminal C at Newark was relatively quiet and there were few people waiting to go through security to check in for flights. The departure board was listing few delays. Planes were taking off and there didn't appear to be long lines of planes waiting on the tarmac. 

The arrivals board showed some afternoon flights with later arrival times than originally scheduled and a few had "Air traffic control" posted under the "Remarks" column.

By noon, some delays were being caused by high winds, according to an official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the region's three major airports.

The delays and staffing shortages come a day after Congress failed to pass legislation to fund the government and end the shutdown, which has lasted 35 days. That makes this the longest shutdown in American history; prior to this the longest closure in 1995 and early 1996 lasted 25 days.

The story continues below the tweet.

The news also comes two days after leaders of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union which represents the controllers, held a press conference on the steps of Capitol Hill arguing that the shutdown was harming the safety of air travel in the United States.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said President Trump had been briefed on the delays and the White House was monitoring the situation.

Air traffic controllers have been working without pay since Dec. 22. They have received paychecks during that time, but each check read $0.00, said Bill Striffler, the union’s representative at Newark airport.

“We have a growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines and the traveling public due to the government shutdown,” according to a statement by the union. “In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break.”

The FAA downplayed the delays. 

“We have experienced a slight increase in sick leave at two facilities,” a spokesman for the FAA said in a statement to USA TODAY. “We’ve mitigated the impact by augmenting staffing, rerouting traffic, and increasing spacing between aircraft when needed. The results have been minimal impacts to efficiency while maintaining consistent levels of safety in the national airspace system. The public can monitor air traffic at fly.faa.gov and they should check with airline carriers for more information.”

Staff writers Scott Fallon, Matt Fagan, Svetlana Shkolnikova and Tariq Zehawi contributed to this article.

Email: maag@northjersey.com