Copyright CBS News
Commercial air travel around the U.S. isn't expected to return to normal immediately after the U.S. government reopens, according to aviation experts. The government shutdown has snarled airport operations across the country, leading to flight delays and cancellations. While a vote to reopen the government would come as a relief to consumers, as well as to air traffic controllers and other Transportation Department personnel tasked with working without pay during the impasse, the system will take some time to recover. "My guess is it's going to take a couple weeks," aviation security expert Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told CBS News. "They have to get people back in places, airplanes back in places. This is non-trivial." He likened the process of ramping operations back up to turning a dial, rather than "flicking a switch," noting that some airlines may have sent planes for maintenance as the Federal Aviation Administration throttled air traffic at major airports last week because of the shutdown. "They didn't furlough crew and put equipment away, but they might have put it in heavy maintenance," Jacobson said. Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, a group promoting libertarian principles, said the flying public should expect it "to take many weeks" for air travel to return to normal. "It definitely won't happen immediately," he told CBS News. The FAA slowed flight traffic to maintain safety standards after more air traffic controllers than usual called out sick as they worked without pay during the lapse in funding. The U.S. has long faced a shortage of air traffic controllers, a deficit exacerbated by the shutdown. "We had a serious shortage of controllers before the shutdown. We have a worse shortage after, because the rate of controller retirements has increased during the shutdown," Poole said. Resuming paychecks for federal workers will incentivize air traffic controllers who called out sick to return to their jobs, according to experts. But back pay that workers are entitled to once the shutdown concludes might not arrive immediately, slowing how quickly operations can rebound. "At the very least, it's likely that air traffic controllers will need to see back pay in their bank accounts before the higher-than-usual callout rates end," Julian Kheel, founder of Points Path, a flight search engine, told CBS News. In the near term, passengers looking ahead to upcoming trips should prepare to face continued disruptions, he added. "The U.S. aviation system runs on precise coordination, and once that rhythm is broken, it won't bounce back overnight," Kheel said. "From a passenger perspective, the first few days after the shutdown ends will likely see longer lines, reduced staffing and ongoing delays as the system recalibrates to full capacity."
