Air traffic controllers missed their first full paycheck of the shutdown on Tuesday, as union leaders and the secretary of transportation warned of dire consequences if they missed another.
“Many of our controllers can make it without this first paycheck; they’ve been in the job 10, 15, 20 years; they’ve planned for days like this,” Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said at a news conference at LaGuardia Airport, flanked by air traffic controllers from the area. But, he added, “almost every controller can’t make it two paychecks.”
Mr. Duffy has highlighted the national work force of nearly 11,000 air traffic controllers as the face of the government shutdown that began on Oct. 1. While insisting flying was still safe, he has warned in news conferences and media appearances of more air travel delays and escalating consequences once controllers started to miss their paychecks.
Controllers, who are employed by the Federal Aviation Administration, are among the federal workers required to stay on the job without pay, because of the role they play in protecting public safety. (President Trump has sought maneuvers to pay some law enforcement and military workers during the shutdown.)
On Tuesday, controllers made their own public outreach, fanning out at major airports across the country in yellow union shirts and handing passengers pamphlets urging them to contact their representatives to end the shutdown.
“America’s air traffic controllers are now having to focus on how they put gas in the car, how do they take care of their children, how do they paid for child care,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said during Tuesday’s news conference. “That makes the system less safe.”
Controllers received a partial paycheck earlier in the shutdown, on Oct. 14, for work performed before the shutdown began. But even before Tuesday’s missed payment, administration officials and union chiefs were warning that some controllers were having to take side jobs to cover their expenses. The controllers already work in a field far short of fully staffed, and financial strain puts them under additional stress that could start to compromise their job performance.
The newest controllers, who do not command the high salaries some senior controllers enjoy, have felt the impact of the missed pay most acutely, according to Mr. Duffy and Mr. Daniels.
“We have trainees trying to learn a new job that is very fast paced, very stressful, very complex, now having to worry about how they’re going to pay bills,” said Joe Segretto, a senior air traffic controller at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control facility on Long Island, known as N90, which has faced staffing problems.
“As we talk about morale, it’s diminishing,” Mr. Segretto added.
Mr. Duffy has said that it is still safe to fly, citing the delays as evidence that the F.A.A. is taking proactive measures to ensure that air traffic stays within the limits of what controllers are able to handle.
Yet the F.A.A. has a shortfall of about 3,000 controllers, according to its own data. And even before the complications of the shutdown, many facilities were requiring controllers to work a significant amount of overtime to keep planes flying.
Since the onset of the shutdown, a number of large airports have had “staffing triggers,” which occur when facilities are too short staffed to handle the traffic, causing ground stops or other delays. Mr. Duffy has blamed many of these episodes on the shutdown, including a temporary ground stop at Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend that he said took place when 11 of 25 controllers called in sick.
But the controllers’ union disputed his conclusion and offered a different explanation.
“What you’ve seen is just how fragile our aviation system is during a national shortage of these critical safety professionals,” union officials said in an emailed statement, when asked whether the recent staffing triggers could be attributed to the shutdown. They said the union had “consistently warned that the controller staffing shortage leaves the system vulnerable, and the recent events underscore the urgent need to accelerate hiring and training.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Daniels also said unequivocally that the union would not break the law to go on strike.
Still, the shutdown — now the second-longest on record — is taking its toll on controllers who were already feeling the weight of a system under stress.
“The morale is definitely low right now. It’s been like that for some time,” said Jason Felser, 49, a controller at the New York center for about 25 years, who was handing out union pamphlets to passengers leaving the baggage claim of Terminal B in LaGuardia on Tuesday. Most did not stop.
Mr. Felser said he had experienced five or six shutdowns as a controller and had become tired of the uncertainty. He said he was considering retiring soon, as he became eligible, not least because his source of income would be more stable in retirement.
“This shutdown feels like there is no end in sight,” he said. “We don’t know, is it going to be one, two, three paychecks missed? There’s no way to budget against infinity.”
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
Christine Chung is a Times reporter covering airlines and consumer travel.
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