The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is set to end all flight reductions at major U.S. airports in the wake of a lengthy government shutdown that caused aviation chaos over the last few weeks.
On Sunday, the FAA issued an order to end the reduction of “operations at certain airports by 3 percent” and reinstate “normal operating levels” by Monday at 6:00 a.m.
“I want to thank the FAA’s dedicated safety team for keeping our skies secure during the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history and the country’s patience for putting safety first,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement in a Sunday press release.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, controllers have returned to their posts and normal operations can resume,” he added.
Duffy on Tuesday had warned of “massively more disruption” in air travel if the shutdown continued into the weekend.
Last week, the Senate voted to end the recent government shutdown, which had been ongoing for more than a month. The upper chamber voted 60-40 on a bill to fund military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch through the end of September, and the rest of the government for the next two and a half months.
The FAA and Transportation Department had previously said flight reductions would go down from 6 percent to 3 percent over the weekend at 40 major airports.
“I am grateful for the hard work of the FAA safety and operations teams and for their focus on the safety of the traveling public,” FAA Administration Bryan Bedford also said in the release.
