The leaders of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation announced on Friday that they would reduce flight restrictions at 40 key airports from 6 to 3 percent starting on Saturday, scaling back cuts they had imposed to address air travel disruptions brought on by staffing shortages during the government shutdown.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the F.A.A. administrator, Bryan Bedford, said the 3 percent restrictions would remain in place while the F.A.A. monitored the situation through the weekend to determine when fully restored operations could resume. Air traffic controller staffing has been steadily improving since the shutdown ended Wednesday night, they said.
Mr. Duffy and Mr. Bedford launched the cuts a week ago, citing data that they said showed worsening staffing problems at air traffic control facilities, worrisome rates of airplanes coming into proximity of each other and a rise in confidential reports from airplane pilots claiming controllers seemed more distracted and less responsive than usual.
The restrictions, applied to 40 busy airports, were initially supposed to encompass 10 percent of all flights in and out of those locations by Friday — but they never rose to that level. Mr. Duffy and Mr. Bedford froze the cuts at 6 percent just hours before the shutdown ended.
On Friday, they credited improvements in the number of so-called staffing triggers, which occur when controller absences at an air traffic facility reach a level that forces delays, as driving the decision to begin reducing the restrictions. The announcement noted that there were 11 staffing triggers across the U.S. airspace on Tuesday, 13 on Wednesday, four on Thursday and only three as of about 5 p.m. on Friday.
Those numbers are an improvement from the weekend, when on Saturday there were 81 staffing triggers — a record high for the shutdown. They also show improvement compared with similar days last week. There were 19 staffing triggers last Tuesday and 14 last Wednesday, but the number steadily climbed after that.
The reduction in flight restrictions comes as welcome news for the airlines, which, according to the industry trade group Airlines for America, were bracing for losses of up to $100 million a day when it appeared that cuts might reach 10 percent. Industry and government officials have estimated that it would take about a week after the government reopened for air travel to return to normal, allowing the sector to recover before the busy Thanksgiving travel season begins in earnest next weekend.
“Safety is always our top priority, which is why airlines comply with all F.A.A. regulations,” Airlines of America said in a statement.
Mr. Duffy has credited the government’s reopening for improving attendance and morale among controllers, who were already grappling with staffing shortages before the shutdown and were forced to work without pay through the impasse. That became untenable for some controllers as they began to miss paychecks, government and union officials said, forcing some to seek outside sources of income and worsening attendance problems.
Earlier on Friday, Mr. Duffy said that controllers had begun receiving the first 70 percent of what they were owed for working without pay during the shutdown. Earlier this week, President Trump recommended that controllers with perfect attendance receive a $10,000 bonus. Mr. Duffy endorsed the idea, but it is unclear when those might be paid out.
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem began doling out $10,000 bonuses to employees of the Transportation Security Administration who she said “went above and beyond” during the shutdown. She said the bonuses were covered by leftover 2025 funds that came from cost savings the Trump administration had negotiated. Representatives for the D.H.S. and T.S.A. did not respond to a request for more details about the source of the funds.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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