Apr. 21, 2013
Air travel is likely to become even more frustrating than usual, starting today. The Federal Aviation Administration has begun furloughs resulting from mandatory budget cuts for some of its 47,000 agency employees.
It’s unclear how many employees are already affected by so-called sequestration, the automatic federal spending cuts that kicked in this year after Congress failed to reach a deal to reduce the national deficit.
The bottom line is that travelers are faced with the real possibility of hours-long delays as air-traffic controllers — there are 15,000 of them — begin to take unpaid leave, the FAA says.
American Airlines has said that some of the nation’s busiest airports will most likely be affected by the FAA cuts: JFK in New York; Newark; Chicago’s O’Hare; LAX in Los Angeles; and New York’s LaGuardia.
This is a relatively slow time of year for air travel, so any fallout would likely intensify in the summer, when weekends rival Thanksgiving for busiest air-travel time, travel experts say. Throw in unpredictable summer thunderstorms, and there’s reason for worry, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/OTUS/airport-delays-point-sequester-cuts/story?id=19010721#.UXmIokrpxGk
