‘America’s Flightmare’ Begins: Nearly 1000 Flights Canceled Already in Schumer Shutdown

After nearly six weeks of Beltway stunts, the rest of America has finally entered the Schumer Shutdown chat. SNAP recipients had already arrived a few days ago, but now every American with a boarding pass and hotel reservations — or plans at home — has joined as well.

Yesterday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that the FAA would scale back operations at 40 major airports. Today, the flight boards began flashing red in earnest:

Airports across the United States started cutting back on thousands of flights early Friday after the record-long government shutdown caused staffing shortages. 

Airlines scrambled to meet demands and began canceling flights overnight in anticipation of the FAA’s order, while travelers with bookings this weekend waited anxiously to learn whether they would take off on time.

More than 780 flights scheduled for today have already been called off nationwide, according to FlightAware, and many more are expected to be scrapped.

Delta Air Lines said it would scratch roughly 170 flights Friday, and American Airlines planned to cut 220 a day through Monday.

And that’s just today. Without a deal to restore funding likely for another few days, these traffic snarls will only multiply. One point that may not be immediately obvious is the logistics nightmare that this will create for airlines. They use most of their airplanes for two or more flights a day, and their schedules depend on a complicated sequencing of these assets. As anyone who has flown regularly will know, a failure to get a flight off the ground has knock-on effects throughout the rest of the day and sometimes longer than that. Canceling 10% of all flights for a few days will likely have an exponential impact on the airlines’ abilities to fulfill their schedules, and it may not take long to snarl the air industry far past the ten-percent mark.

By the time Monday rolls around, the miss rate will be much higher. Can the Senate avoid this by getting a deal in place sooner? Roll Call sounds skeptical about another effort by John Thune and the Senate GOP to bundle the clean CR with three appropriations bills and another extension for more negotiations. Nevertheless, Thune apparently will hold the Senate open today to try:

Senate leaders plan to take up a stopgap funding measure in a rare Friday session to test whether a Democratic logjam could finally break to end the longest partial government shutdown in history.

But after a long day of closed-door talks, Democrats remained mostly tight-lipped about their intentions, with some suggesting they were prepared to continue the standoff until they secure an extension of expiring health insurance subsidies. Republicans leaders have insisted they would not negotiate on health subsidies until the government is reopened. …

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told his conference he planned to take up the doomed, House-passed continuing resolution, extending funding through Nov. 21, and seek to amend it to reopen the government through an undetermined date. He and other GOP leaders have favored a funding extension into January to avoid a pre-Christmas omnibus measure.

The stopgap bill could be accompanied by a compromise version of three full-year appropriations measures that passed the Senate months ago in a combo package. Those are the Agriculture, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction-VA bills.

However, Roll Call also reports that Thune’s own caucus may not go along with this “bundling.” Rand Paul has voted against the clean CR all along, and now also objects to new restrictions on the industrial hemp industry. John Kennedy told reporters yesterday that other Senate Republicans have specific gripes on the three appropriations bills that would likely result in “holds” being placed on them. Kennedy nonetheless wants Thune to proceed, because “we’ll find out how serious the Democrats are or not.”

Well, that is one reason. Another is that most of them can’t catch a flight home anyway. May as well do some work!

Donald Trump is sick of the entire mess. He reminded Senate Republicans of this fact today. Repeatedly:

Thus far, Thune and the Senate GOP still oppose this. One does have to wonder, though, whether a narrow carve-out of the filibuster for clean CRs might not be a rational response to this obstruction. It is not a good option, as it would essentially give Congress a path to boot even more of its obligations and avoid taking the tough votes that governance requires. On the other hand, this particular Congress seems incapable of that kind of action, mainly because Chuck Schumer likes taking hostages more than he likes doing his job. 

In the meantime, skip the airports. Gas is cheap at the moment, and America’s highways await. At this point, the travelers stranded by the Schumer Shutdown might get home more quickly if they walk.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is still here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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