WASHINGTON: Major airlines braced for a third day of government-mandated flight cuts Sunday after rising air traffic control staffing shortages snarled thousands of flights on Saturday.
The Federal Aviation Administration instructed airlines to cut four percent of daily flights starting on Friday at 40 major airports because of air traffic control safety concerns. The shutdown, which has reached a record 40 days, has led to shortages of air traffic controllers who, like other federal employees, have not been paid for weeks.
Reductions in flights are mandated to reach to six percent on Tuesday and then hit 10 percent by November 14.
The FAA said on Saturday there were air traffic control staffing shortages impacting 42 airport towers and other centers and delaying flights in at least 12 major US cities including Atlanta, Newark, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
Some 1,550 flights were canceled and 6,700 flights were delayed on Saturday, compared with Friday when 1,025 were canceled and 7,000 were delayed.
Airline officials privately said the number of delay programs made it nearly impossible to schedule and plan many flights and expressed alarm about how the system would function if staffing issues worsened.
The cuts, which began on Friday morning, include about 700 flights from the four largest carriers: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines. The airlines are due to cancel about the same number of flights Sunday.
During the government shutdown, 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 security screeners have been forced to work without pay.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it was possible he could require 20 percent cuts in air traffic if more controllers stop showing up for work. “I assess the data,” Duffy said. “We’re going to make decisions based on what we see in the airspace.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz said he was told by the FAA that since the shutdown started pilots have filed more than 500 safety reports about mistakes made by air traffic controllers because of fatigue.
US airlines brace for third day of government-mandated flight cuts
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US airlines brace for third day of government-mandated flight cuts
- Air traffic control staffing shortages impacting 42 airport towers and other centers and delaying flights
- Some 1,550 flights were canceled and 6,700 flights were delayed on Saturday, compared with Friday’s 1,025
Russian drone strike kills 12-year-old boy in Ukraine as peace talks kept under wraps
- In Dnipropetrovsk region, a Russian drone attack Thursday night destroyed a house where the boy was killed and two women were injured
- The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 137 drones of various types during the night
KYIV: Russian drones struck a house in central Ukraine, killing a 12-year-old boy, officials said, while long-range Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted a Russian port and an oil refinery as US peace efforts continued out of public view.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s meeting in Florida on Thursday with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s lead negotiator, was “productive,” according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The American and Ukrainian officials were due to brief their respective leaders on Friday and reconvene for further talks later in the day , the official added.
The talks came after discussions between President Vladimir Putin and the US envoys at the Kremlin on Tuesday.
Previous diplomatic attempts to break the deadlock have come to nothing and the nearly four-year war has continued unabated. Officials largely have kept a lid on how the latest talks are going, though Trump’s initial 28-point plan was leaked.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s delegation in Miami wanted to hear from the US side about the talks at the Kremlin.
Zelensky, as well as European leaders backing him, have repeatedly accused Putin of stalling in peace talks while the Russian army tries to press forward with its invasion.
Zelensky said in a video address late Thursday that officials wanted to know “what other pretexts Putin has come up with to drag out the war and to pressure Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, who accompanied Putin on a visit to India on Friday, repeated the Russian leaders’ recent criticism of Europe’s stance on the peace talks. Kyiv’s European allies are concerned about possible Russian aggression beyond Ukraine and want a prospective peace deal to include strong security guarantees.
Kyiv’s allies in Europe are “constantly putting forward demands that are unacceptable to Moscow,” Ushakov told Russia’s state-owned Zvezda TV. “Putting it mildly, the Europeans don’t help Washington and Moscow reach a settlement on the Ukrainian issues.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that he made progress during a visit to Beijing on getting Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s support for peace efforts.
“We exchanged deeply and truthfully on all points, and I saw a willingness from the (Chinese) president to contribute to stability and peace,” Macron said.
The French president said he stressed that Ukraine needs guarantees that Russia won’t attack it again if a settlement is reached and that Europe must have a voice in negotiations.
“The unity between Americans and Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential. And I say it, repeat it, emphasize it. We need to work together,” Macron said.
In Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, a Russian drone attack Thursday night destroyed a house where the boy was killed and two women were injured, according to the head of the regional military administration, Vladyslav Haivanenko.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 137 drones of various types during the night.
Ukrainian drones attacked a port and an oil refinery inside Russia overnight as part of Kyiv’s campaign to disrupt Russian logistics, Ukraine’s general staff said.
The drones struck Temriuk sea port in Russia’s Krasnodar region and the Syzran oil refinery in the Samara region, starting blazes, a statement said. Syzran is about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of the border with Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry said only that its air defenses intercepted 85 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and the illegally annexed Crimea overnight.
