The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it would reduce air traffic by 10 percent at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports.
This move, analysts said, would force airlines to cancel thousands of flights while the administration attempts to pressure Democrats to end the government shutdown.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the reductions were an attempt to “alleviate the pressure” on air traffic controllers, who have been working without compensation since the start of the shutdown and have not received a paycheck since mid-October.
He said the administration would announce the affected markets on Thursday, as the year’s busiest travel season approaches.
The cuts would take effect on Friday, potentially forcing hundreds of thousands of travelers to change their plans on short notice, as airlines are pressured to slash capacity across their routes. Representatives of several major airlines and Airlines for America, a trade association, stated that they were collaborating with the Federal Aviation Administration to comprehend the details of the new requirements but had yet to implement any changes.
Turmoil in the nation’s air travel system, which moves millions of passengers daily, has long been considered to be among the most tangible and disruptive potential effects of government shutdowns — and consequently, one of the most significant pain points to force a deal.
Despite a shutdown that stretched into its 36th day on Wednesday, the system has primarily held up so far, although it has shown some worrisome signs of fraying.
Mr. Duffy has been sounding an alarm about the pressures on the Federal Aviation Administration’s force of certified air traffic controllers, most of whom were already working overtime shifts to compensate for about 3,000 vacancies among its 14,000 positions before the shutdown.
Controllers, who are required to work through the shutdown without salary, are facing their second missed paycheck on Tuesday.
Mr. Duffy warned earlier this week of “mass chaos” if the shutdown went on, and said the F.A.A. could close parts of the national airspace to traffic to avoid a broader meltdown.
His Wednesday announcement marked a step in that direction, as he and Bryan Bedford, the F.A.A. administrator, forecast more restrictions if staffing worsened.
“We’re not going to wait for a safety problem to truly manifest itself when the early indicators tell us we can take action today,” Mr. Bedford said at a news conference with Mr. Duffy on Wednesday, adding that officials were “going to look for a radical reduction across these 40 markets.”
The F.A.A. informed airline industry officials on Wednesday that the cuts would commence with a 4 percent reduction in affected markets on Friday and escalate through the weekend, reaching a 10 percent decrease by next week, according to a person familiar with the discussion who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
It was not immediately clear what had prompted the change in approach. Though controller absences led to a raft of significant delays on Halloween and affected operations at some large airports through the weekend, interruptions have been comparatively benign since the start of the work week.
Yet Mr. Duffy has steadily ratcheted up the intensity of his warnings that calamity is near, even as he acknowledged that air traffic controllers have been weathering the current shutdown better than past government funding freezes.
Much of his language has been aimed at increasing pressure on Democrats, whom he has accused of needlessly fomenting a “senseless shutdown.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Duffy warned that by next week, “you will see mass chaos, you will see mass flight delays, you will see mass cancellations” absent an end to the impasse.
Although Mr. Duffy’s warnings to date have been infused with distinctly political messages, on Wednesday, he and Mr. Bedford stated that the decision to reduce flights was driven by data and a desire to ensure that air travel remains safe.
Yet the announcement quickly ratcheted up political accusations in other corners of Washington.
“Democrats are flirting with disaster,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Senate panel that oversees the F.A.A., wrote in a social media post. He added that Mr. Duffy and Mr. Bedford “have no choice but to start curtailing air travel across the country.”
