Flights to LaGuardia Airport in New York City have been restricted due to a staff shortage from the ongoing partial government shutdown, NBC News reports.
Flights to LaGuardia have been delayed by an average of 40 minutes, according to the FAA announcement. Flights to other Northeast airports, including Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania, Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, also have experienced delays.
"We have experienced a slight increase in sick leave at two air traffic control facilities affecting New York and Florida," the Federal Aviation Authority said in a statement. "As with severe storms, we will adjust operations to a safe rate to match available controller resources. We've mitigated the impact by augmenting staffing, rerouting traffic, and increasing spacing between aircraft as needed. The results have been minimal impacts to efficiency while maintaining consistent levels of safety in the national airspace system."
A group of unions that represent air travel workers, including pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers, said in a joint statement earlier this week that “In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. It is unprecedented.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.