(Washington) A thousand flights were canceled Friday at American airports due to the budget blockage which is stretching out and has led the authorities to reduce air traffic in the face of the shortage of air traffic controllers.
As a security measure, the Trump administration on Wednesday imposed a reduction in traffic in forty of the busiest American airports in the face of a lack of personnel in control towers, who have been asked for more than five weeks to work without being paid due to the “shutdown”.
International flights are not affected, Transport Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed on Friday.
Arriving safely in New York from Canada on Friday, Ravi, a forty-year-old businessman who does not wish to give his last name, is due to leave for Miami on Sunday. “We hope not to be affected. So I take another flight. I don’t want to, but it’s already booked,” he told AFP.
A thousand flights were canceled Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware, which identifies Washington (Reagan), Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta airports as those most affected. Around 700 cancellations are announced for Saturday.
PHOTO NAM Y. HUH, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Flight schedules are posted at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, November 7, 2025.
The capital’s Reagan Airport warned in the afternoon on social media to “expect significant delays and cancellations in the evening due to reduced air traffic.” »
Domestic and regional flights
According to the Department of Transportation, air traffic is reduced by 4% on Friday, then will be reduced by 6% on Tuesday and up to 10% in a week, if the budgetary paralysis continues.
From Miami airport, Jose Rincon, 78, expects “a lot of problems starting this weekend.” “And I don’t know why the government is allowing the blockade to continue, especially for things as essential as the safety and comfort of passengers,” he told AFP.
“Reduce flights, if it’s a question of security, absolutely, but we should never have come to this,” laments Elvira Buchi, who came to pick up her daughter at La Guardia airport in New York.
In his 38e day Friday, the budgetary paralysis is the longest in American history, Republican and Democratic parliamentarians being unable to agree on a new budget.
United Airlines says the cancellations are focused on “domestic and regional flights that do not connect to our airport hubs.”
PHOTO KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Travelers line up at a security checkpoint at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on November 7, 2025.
These disruptions are added to the queues which are lengthening at checkpoints managed by security agents, who have also been deprived of pay for more than a month.
“That’s a lot to ask.”
They begin on the eve of a weekend that many Americans will extend until Tuesday, November 11, a public holiday in the United States. And they come as Thanksgiving approaches, the big family holiday for which millions of Americans fly every year, on November 27.
“If you have to go to a wedding, funeral or something else important in the next few days, given the risk of flight cancellations, I would advise buying a backup ticket on another airline,” suggests the boss of the low-cost airline Frontier, Barry Biffle, on social networks.
As an illustration, the American air regulator (FAA) explained on October 31 that half of the 30 main airports “are experiencing staff shortages” and that nearly 80% of air traffic controllers were absent at New York airports. “After 31 days without pay, air traffic controllers are under immense stress and fatigue.”
“It’s a lot to ask to work under pressure without being paid,” Kathleen, an 81-year-old retiree who arrived in New York from Saint Louis, Missouri, told AFP.
Around 14,000 air traffic controllers monitor the American skies. Every day more than three million passengers fly in the United States, with an average of more than 44,000 flights, according to the FAA.
