On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance held a roundtable with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and airline industry leaders to discuss how the ongoing government shutdown threatens to disrupt Americans’ holiday travel.
Speaking to Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan at the roundtable, Vance warned that pilots, air traffic controllers, and TSA agents may seek new jobs rather than continue operating under “incredible stress” without getting paid.
“Maybe that guy doesn’t show up to work,” Vance said. “Maybe he goes and gets a different job. That means greater delays for the American people.”
Chris Sununu, CEO of Airlines for America and former New Hampshire governor, was part of Thursday’s roundtable. He said morale was a large focus of the conversation.
“The whole point of this is how do we get out of this before we have some sort of critical issue where it’s like a logjam of airlines on the tarmac, and things like that, similar to what we saw in 2019,” Sununu told The Daily Wire, stressing that it’s safe to fly, but that staffing shortages create delays in order to keep the system safe.
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“Nobody wants the airline industry to be the linchpin, and the fear is that the Democrats right now are saying, ‘We’re just gonna wait until we see a big traffic jam, you know, happening somewhere, and then we’ll move.’ Which isn’t right, because it’s not right to the American public, it’s not right to these workers,” he continued.
The shutdown will presumably roll into next week, as no deal has been reached yet to reopen the federal government. Republicans have been demanding that a clean continuing resolution be passed and have voted accordingly, whereas most Democrats have used the shutdown to push for the continuation of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire next year. Southwest, United, American, and Delta all put out statements calling on Congress to reopen the government, Fox Business reported.
“They see the impact and feel that impact a little differently depending on what’s happening in the area because where the callouts have been happening — it’s all over the place,” Sununu said regarding which cities airlines have their hubs in.
“It really does need to be noted that we all thought it would be much worse right now. The FAA and these air traffic controllers have done an amazing job mitigating what should’ve been, by now, probably a much worse situation. We have some delays, but it’s nothing overly significant. It’s increasing by the day now. I think the inflection point is we’re seeing the traffic controllers not getting paid.”
However, Sununu noted that an under-discussed element of the shutdown is TSA agents taking a financial hit, as they tend to make less than air traffic controllers.
“Their decision-making process in terms of ‘Look, I can’t come in today. I gotta go drive an Uber. I have to go work a part-time shift somewhere else cause I need money.’ Their decision-making process is actually gonna happen a lot faster than the air traffic controllers,” he said.
“The planes are still gonna take off and all of that, but you’re gonna have a lot more delays, and it’s gonna affect the American public and the customers a lot more severely,” he added.
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