More Than 14,000 Flights Delayed Since Monday

Travelers wait in line at the Delta check-in counter at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Aug. 8, 2016. Delta flights around the globe were grounded and delayed on Monday morning due to a system outage. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Thousands of flights were disrupted in the first three days of Thanksgiving week amid harsh weather conditions and a shortage of air traffic controllers.

More than 14,000 flights were delayed in the United States between Monday and Wednesday, according to data from FlightAware. In addition, 214 were canceled. There have already been 583 delays and 46 cancellations as of 10:21 a.m. EST, Nov. 28.

As many as 5.84 million people are expected to fly domestically for this Thanksgiving, according to an estimate from the American Automobile Association, which it called a “new record.”

The National Weather Service is predicting wind chills and “potential for hazardous travel impacts” from Thanksgiving through the end of the weekend, according to a Nov. 28 X post.

Thanksgiving Day will see the arrival of the “first significant Arctic outbreak of the season,” the agency said. Temperatures in the Midwest and northern plains will potentially be at their coldest since February. “Dangerously cold wind chills” are expected in the Dakotas and Minnesota. The cold weather could result in more flight disruptions.

“Travel disruptions are likely, especially on I-90 between Cleveland and Buffalo and I-81 north of Syracuse. Travel could be very difficult to impossible with multiple feet of snow in the hardest hit locations,” the service said.

Meanwhile, a shortage of air traffic controllers is also being blamed for flight disruptions. On Tuesday, United Airlines said that travelers at the Newark Liberty International Airport were facing “significant disruption” because of an acute shortage of controllers.

The airline said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been forced to reduce traffic flows to the Newark hub because of low staffing on 12 of the first 25 days of November, disrupting more than 343,000 United travelers by delays, cancellations, long taxi times, and longer flight times related to air traffic control delays for Newark.

United said that on Nov. 15 alone, air traffic control staffing issues resulted in canceled flights that disrupted 1,880 customers; gate and other delays disrupted an additional 24,558.

The FAA said that in the Newark airspace, the agency is “addressing a decades-long issue of staffing and has been transparent with airlines and travelers about our plan.”

Staffing Issues

The issue of air traffic controller (ATC) shortage was highlighted by Airlines for America earlier this year. The trade organization of leading American airlines launched a “Staff the Towers” campaign, urging the FAA and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to boost ATC staffing, according to a May 21 statement.

“We have been sounding the alarm on this issue for more than a year that our nation’s air traffic control radar facilities are understaffed and overworked,” said the group’s president, Nicholas E. Calio.

“It’s past time Secretary Buttigieg and Administrator Whitaker take action to solve this crisis and increase staffing.”

A June 2023 report from the DOT Office of Inspector General found that the FAA had only made “limited efforts” to ensure that critical air traffic control facilities have adequate ATC staff.

The FAA had also not yet implemented a standardized scheduling tool that would optimize scheduling practices for air traffic controllers at such facilities. The agency does not have enough staff members and also lacks a plan to resolve the situation, the report said. This poses “a risk to the continuity of air traffic operations.”

“For example, we determined that 20 of 26 (77 percent) critical facilities are staffed below the Agency’s 85-percent threshold, with New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) and Miami Tower at 54 percent and 66 percent, respectively,” it said.

In September, the FAA said it had hired a total of 1,811 air traffic controllers in fiscal year 2024, exceeding the hiring goal of 1,800. This marked the largest number of annual hires in almost 10 years. The agency said it had more than 14,000 ATC as of September.

“With this year’s addition, there are now around 3,400 controllers in various stages of training, ranging from initial instruction at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City to specialized airspace training for positions at one of the FAA’s hundreds of air traffic facilities,” it said.

Reuters contributed to this report.