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US air travelers have been warned to brace for chaos as they plan to fly home for Thanksgiving amid the government shutdown. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN's Jake Tapper that a 'substantial' number of Americans will likely miss their flights home due to the severe air traffic control staffing shortage. 'Yesterday, 18 to 22 controllers in Atlanta didn’t show up. We had 81 staffing [shortage] "triggers" throughout the national airspace yesterday,' Duffy said during the Sunday morning State of the Union segment. 'That means controllers weren't coming to work,' he continued. 'It’s only going to get worse. I look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.' He said airports will be flooded with people eager to fly home to their families, but reiterated that many of them will be met with disappointment. 'There are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn't open back up. We have controllers who are making decisions to feed their families.' Major delays continue to plague US airports as the record-breaking government shutdown enters its 40th day. Thousands of flights have been impacted across the US due to a shortage of federal workers at airports, sparking travel misery as Thanksgiving approaches. Some 1,181 flights both arriving and departing the US on Sunday have been canceled and 871 delayed, according to tracking website FlightAware. The lengthy government shutdown is the result of a fight over funding, which has also impacted food assistance for millions of Americans and left 1.4 million federal workers, including those at airports, without pay. With no end to the Senate stalemate in sight, travel chaos is likely to worsen in the coming weeks if lawmakers cannot reach an agreement to end the shutdown. More than 13,000 air traffic controllers have been required to work without pay since October 1. Duffy spoke about the delays last week, blaming Democrats for the stalemate. 'I've been talking to air traffic controllers and there really is frustration. There's a shutdown right now, the democrats are focusing on illegal healthcare,' he told ABC News. 'They don't get paid as air traffic controllers. Those are burning frustrations, like in the rest of the country.
