USA Today - Travel
Thao Nguyen & Eve Chen
16 November 2025
Flight delays are being seen across the country as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is experiencing continued staffing shortages due to the government shutdown.
"I want to thank the FAA’s dedicated safety team for keeping our skies secure during the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history and the country’s patience for putting safety first," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. "Now we can refocus our efforts on surging controller hiring and building the brand new, state-of-the-art air traffic control system the American people deserve."
The announcement came after the FAA ordered a 3% reduction in operations through the weekend, down from 6% as the government shutdown ended. Cancellations had been scheduled to increase if the shutdown dragged on and air traffic controller shortages worsened.
Aviation analytics company Cirium reported even lower disruptions on Nov. 16, with a 0.25% cancellation rate and 91% on-time departures across the 40 impacted airports. It noted that that was below average for cancellations and above average for departure performance.
