SoCal Airport Flight Delays Pile Up As Government Shutdown Causes Control Tower Staff Shortages

LOS ANGELES, CA — Air travel across the United States continues to be impacted as the federal shutdown enters its 35th day, and the situation may worsen, according to a report from The Los Angeles Times.

Hundreds of flights have been delayed over the past several days at Southern California airports, along with a handful of cancellations. Be sure to check with your airline before you head to the airport, travel experts say.

As of noon Tuesday, 82 flights at Los Angeles International Airport were delayed and one was canceled, according to FlightAware.

Across Southern California, airports were also impacted, according to the flight tracking database website.

Travelers leaving San Diego experienced 42 delayed flights on Tuesday, with 25 of them operated by Southwest Airlines, according to Flight Aware.

As of noon Tuesday, 26 flights were delayed in Burbank. The majority of those delays stemmed from Southwest Airlines, originating out of Phoenix.

Further south in Orange County, John Wayne Airport experienced 19 delayed flights by noon Tuesday, as reported by Flight Aware, with 14 of those reported as Southwest flights.

Ontario International Airport had experienced 12 delays as of noon Tuesday and no cancellations.

At Daugherty Field in Long Beach, as of noon on Tuesday, four Southwest flights were delayed, according to FlightAware.

At Santa Barbara Municipal Airport, five flights were delayed, with both American Airlines and SkyWest carriers affected, according to FlightAware.

Among the smaller Southern California airports, Palm Springs International Airport suffered three delays and no cancellations, with flights from United and SkyWest running late. No flights were canceled as of noon.

No flights were delayed at San Bernardino International Airport.

Control towers have been left short-staffed at airports across the country. This has prompted the government to deliberately slow down air travel to preserve passengers' safety, according to the report.

“We will delay, we will cancel, any kind of flight across the national airspace to make sure people are safe,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ABC News. “There is a level of risk that gets injected into the system when we have a controller that’s doing two jobs instead of one.”

Over the weekend, Southern California's two busiest airports — Los Angeles International Airport and San Diego International Airport — both experienced average flight delays of at least an hour on Sunday, according to the Times.

That day, the FAA issued advisories warning that delays "were expected to increase to nearly 1½ hours for flights heading to LAX between 8 and 10 p.m. At San Diego International Airport, delays were expected to worsen to nearly 1 hour and 20 minutes between 9 and 10 p.m." Staffing issues have affected airports across the nation.

Approximately 13,000 air traffic controllers are being asked to work without pay during the lengthy shutdown; they are "wrestling with personal financial pressures" as well as "high levels of fatigue and stress."

On Friday, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels, a union leader for air traffic controllers, released a statement to Congress pleading for the passage of a stopgap bill to end the shutdown.

“It is incredibly unfair to expect hard-working, patriotic American air traffic controllers and their families to bear the full burden of policy disagreements in Congress,” Daniels said. “We have consistently said that NATCA supports any measure that would end this shutdown and pay our members.”