The government shutdown is up to Day #37. It’s the longest shutdown in history. Instead of working together to try to come to a deal, there’s been finger pointing and refusal to talk and the list goes on and on.
The majority of Americans think the reason for the shutdown lies more on one side than the other. But regardless of “whose fault” it is, the shutdown continues, with no end in sight. For flyers, that means longer delays at airports because, let’s face it – regardless of their status, TSA officers and air traffic controllers still need to earn money to pay bills, rent, mortgages, etc. So sure, more and more are calling out sick so they can work a side hustle and be paid for their efforts now, instead of at some time in the future (well, hopefully).
Others are just feeling the strain.
“What you’re seeing is a lot of people who are truly having to call in sick to go earn money elsewhere,” one air traffic controller who works at a facility in the Midwest that handles high-altitude traffic told NPR. “I think you’re also seeing people who are just calling in sick because they’re fed up and they’re like, ‘well, I’m going to spend the holiday weekend with my kids for once.'”
The government’s band-aid
So in recent days, the government decided to decrease the amount of flights from major markets, to let some steam out. You’ve probably read about that in recent days:
- FAA to cut flights by 10% at 40 major airports due to government shutdown (CNBC)
- US to cut flights 10% at 40 airports in government shutdown (Financial Times)
- FAA slashes air traffic by 10% across 40 high-volume markets as government shutdown continues (FOX News. I love how, even on Nov. 6th, THIRTY-SIX DAYS into the shutdown, they still have to explain “What is a government shutdown?” to their audience, to help them understand. Good ol’ FOX News and its audience…)
Meanwhile, although telling airlines and airports to cut 10% of its flights is one way to decrease the pressure on air traffic controllers, there’s another way they could have decreased their workload and inconvenienced a whole lot less ordinary citizens like you and me.
A better fix
Ban private planes.
ATC is in charge of organizing ANYTHING in the sky. From commercial jumbo jets to tourist helicopters, to everything in between.
And do you know what that includes?
Private planes.
In fact, private planes are said to be about 12% of the aircraft that ATC has to deal with. I found these, in the Los Angeles, Miami, Washington DC and NYC areas, with VERY little searching, at the time of writing:
All of those Bombardiers, Gulfstreams, Dassault Falcons and all the rest? At any given time, they’re taking up 12% of ATC’s time and efforts! They’re so popular that Magellan Jets, a private jet company, even boasts about what they can do to make their clients’ flights as comfortable as possible, despite the shutdown. From Magellan Jets:
It would make so much more sense to ground THOSE planes instead of the planes you and I rely on.
- Combined, private jets take up more than “10% of the flights of the busiest 40 airports in the U.S.”
- It would significantly and negatively affect fewer people (an average of a handful per plane vs. a couple of hundred per plane)
There’s no reason why the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and the list of thousands of other wealthy individuals and corporations couldn’t be told, “You can’t fly your private planes right now; the American people are already suffering enough. You can fly commercial to get from here to there.”
But lots of them made all those donations so of course their private jets don’t get temporarily banned.
Instead, thousands upon thousands of ordinary citizens, who are already reeling from extreme prices for everything, crazy tariffs, food insecurity, the threat of medical insurance that’s about to go sky high, watching multiple overseas wars and domestic Gestapo continue, are being told, “Sorry not sorry your flight got cancelled and you can’t visit your grandma before she dies. But you see, Elon has to go from his Austin office to his Fremont office today.”
So, yeah. They didn’t have to inconvenience you; they just chose to do so.
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