The political debate around the government shutdown has elevated one group of federal workers above others: air traffic controllers.
Because of their role in protecting public safety, controllers are required to work through a shutdown without pay, adding stress to a workplace with severe staffing shortages and raising fears that workers calling in sick could cause the national airspace to fall into disarray.
Controllers missing work was widely cited as the reason the last shutdown came to an end in 2019. But that assumption was overblown, according to controllers, aviation safety experts and congressional aides from both parties, some of whom said that the Trump administration and its allies were fanning fears of a controller walkout amid the current shutdown to pressure lawmakers into making a deal to end it.
“That narrative is false,” said Nick Daniels, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He argued that staffing dips in 2019 and last week, which caused the F.A.A. to slow air traffic at some major airports, were troubling but normal.
“The delays before the shutdown were longer than the delays the last three days,” Mr. Daniels said, adding: “We shouldn’t be the rope in this tug of war.”
The 2019 shutdown was entering its 35th day when lawmakers woke up to the news that the F.A.A. had ordered a ground stop at LaGuardia Airport because of controller shortages at two other airports on the East Coast. Hours later, President Trump announced from the White House Rose Garden that Democrats and Republicans had a deal to reopen the government. By that evening, the House and Senate had passed a bill to do so.
But according to experts, congressional aides and contemporary news accounts, the air service delays were merely “icing on the cake,” as one official put it in 2019, for a Republican Party and a president already resolved to quit a losing battle.
“I don’t think it was solely the air traffic control work force that elevated the problem or brought attention to it,” said Michael McCormick, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who previously led the F.A.A.’s air traffic control operations, including through multiple shutdowns. “I think it was other key sectors in government that also were being impacted, such as T.S.A.”
The weekend before the 2019 shutdown ended, the T.S.A. reported that 10 percent of its workers had called in sick — a more than threefold increase over normal levels. Major furloughs at the Internal Revenue Service had also started to collide with the beginning of tax filing season, delaying processing times and refunds. And Senate Republicans were tiring of opinion polls showing the public largely blaming the G.O.P. for the shutdown, and were threatening mutiny.
That shutdown, which began a few days before Christmas, spanned a major political shift in Washington. Barely two weeks into it, the G.O.P.’s control over both houses of Congress and the presidency gave way to a divided legislature.
Forty new House Democrats were sworn in, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, was reinstalled as speaker. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, appeared to step back from the negotiations, which had been centered on whether Congress would fund Mr. Trump’s border wall, and left them to the president and Ms. Pelosi.
As they debated, the Senate did not vote on bills to fund the government until the day before the shutdown ended. And in a sign of the frustration that had been mounting for weeks, six Senate Republicans that afternoon supported the Democrats’ proposal to reopen the government without border wall money.
According to news reports at the time, Mr. McConnell that evening convinced Mr. Trump to concede. But it was not until the next day, several hours after the widely publicized airport delays, that Mr. Trump publicly backed down.
This time around, the politics are different, and the focus on air travel as a factor in ending the shutdown appears to be happening earlier.
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, made several public appearances last week to highlight the plight of air traffic controllers and what he called a “slight tick-up” in absences, casting them as a potential inflection point in the shutdown. Like the rest of the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers, he blamed the funding impasse on Democrats.
“The bottom line is these controllers are stressed out, and they’re rebelling on the shutdown because they may not get paid,” Mr. Duffy said in one Fox News interview, claiming that 53 percent of the delays last week were caused by staffing problems.
In an appearance on Fox Business, Mr. Duffy suggested that as many as 10 percent of controllers were not showing up for work, surmising that they were staging a “lash-out at Democrats.” He also threatened to fire “problem children” who were not showing up for work.
“If we have some on our staff that aren’t dedicated, like we need, we’re going to let them go,” he said.
Air traffic controllers have been particularly sensitive to the suggestion that they have been walking off the job even before missing a paycheck. They are expected to receive a partial paycheck on Tuesday, which will not include time they have worked since the shutdown began. They will receive back pay once the shutdown ends.
The controllers’ union does not dispute the F.A.A.’s claim that last week’s delays were caused by absences that left some shifts with only about half the necessary staffing. But its members say that is not a phenomenon unique to the shutdown.
According to a recent F.A.A. publication, the agency had only 11,683 certified professional controllers and certified professional controllers in training, far short of the 14,633 the agency said it needed late last year. Union leaders say that has caused many towers to operate at severely depressed staffing levels, meaning it could take just one or two controllers calling in sick to trigger a ground stop or other delays.
“Every day there is a facility that we have to do alternate procedures for, because there’s not enough air traffic controllers for it,” Mr. Daniels said. He cited the example of a tower in Midland, Texas, which he said had filled only 45 percent of its positions and had handed at least part of its radar operations over to a different air traffic control facility in Fort Worth.
“You’re seeing the result of an extremely fragile system that we have to contend with,” he said.
Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, said that the focus on controllers has been politically strategic, especially in the wake of the Jan. 29 collision between a commercial jet and a military helicopter outside Washington that killed 67 people, which heightened the public’s awareness of air travel safety.
“The parties want to get the public on their side,” she said, adding that delayed and missed flights were a “visceral type of pain that people can see and understand” — and tie back to Washington.
“That’s in part why there’s the focus on air traffic and airport delays,” she said.
But in this shutdown, other parts of the aviation sector may end up affecting passengers sooner.
Last week, “call outs” in the T.S.A. began to rise — including as many as 50 of the 225 or so officers at Philadelphia International Airport who skipped work or showed up late on Monday.
“A lot of people don’t want to get to their last dollar before they make preparations,” said Johnny Jones, Secretary-Treasurer of American Federation of Government Employees’ T.S.A. Council 100, the union representing T.S.A. officials.
“We want to come to work, we’re willing to come to work, we’re going to come into work as long as we can,” Mr. Jones added. “But you know what? Gas stations don’t take I.O.U.s. Child care don’t take I.O.U.s.”
On Friday, T.S.A. workers, who also must work unpaid until the shutdown ends, began to receive some of their final pay until the government reopens.
A T.S.A. representative said last week that recent call outs had not caused delays in airport operations.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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