A full ground stop was issued this morning at LaGuardia Airport thanks to a staffing issue related to sick calls, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday.
The stop was ordered shortly before 10 a.m. more than a month after the federal government partially shutdown. A lack of workers at an air-traffic control facility in the Washington D.C. area prompted the FAA to issue the ground stop and warnings about delays at airports across the nation. LaGuardia reopened about an hour later.
"We have experienced a slight increase in sick leave at two air traffic control facilities affecting New York and Florida," the FAA 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."
Some flights arriving to LaGuardia have been delayed, with the FAA reporting an average of 41 minute delays for flights bound for LaGuardia. Flights bound for other airports on the east coast, including Washington's Reagan National, Newark Liberty International, and Philadelphia International have also seen delays Friday.
"The results have been minimal impacts to efficiency while maintaining consistent levels of safety in the national airspace system," the statement from the FAA added. "The public can monitor air traffic at fly.faa.gov and they should check with airline carriers for more information."
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the situation.
"We are in regular contact with officials at the Department of Transportation and the FAA,” she said.
The ground stop comes on same day nearly 800,000 federal workers missed a second paycheck after since the shutdown began on Dec. 22. Elected officials and union leaders have been warning politicians in Washington about dangers posed to the nation's air traffic control system by the government shutdown. Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said today's ground stop is exactly what the group has been warning about.
"The aviation system depends on the safety professionals who make it run," said Nelson. "They have been doing unbelievably heroic work even as they are betrayed by the government that employs them. They are fatigued, worried and distracted, but they won’t risk our safety. So the planes will stay on the ground. This is anything but a sickout — it is only about our safety and the air traffic controllers' absolute commitment to it."
The FAA says the sickouts at air traffic control centers are the "en route" centers in Washington D.C. and Jacksonville, Florida, which has caused a ripple effect increasing the delays.
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