Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said on Tuesday that parts of the country could face an airspace shutdown if the government shutdown stretches into next week.
“So if, if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” Duffy said. “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.”
About 13,000 air traffic controllers are currently working without pay, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, while nearly 50% of all major air traffic control facilities face staffing shortages.
“We will delay, we will cancel, any kind of flight across the national airspace to make sure people are safe,” Duffy told ABC News on Sunday. “There is a level of risk that gets injected into the system when we have a controller that’s doing two jobs instead of one.”
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The FAA did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.
Duffy said in October that air traffic controllers could be fired if they repeatedly call out sick. He claimed at the time that about 10% of air traffic controllers were not coming into work as a way of “lashing out” at the lawmakers responsible for the federal government shutdown.
“When you come to work, you get paid,” Duffy told Fox News. “If you don’t come to work, you don’t get paid ... If we have some on our staff that aren’t dedicated, we’re going to let them go.”
Over the weekend, Duffy changed his tune, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he would not fire any air traffic controllers for not showing up to work.
“They need support, they need money, they need a paycheck,” he said Sunday. “They don’t need to be fired.”
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