WASHINGTON — The furlough of air traffic controllers delayed more than 1,200 flights on Monday, the first weekday of the unpaid leaves, the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday as lawmakers criticized the agency for how it was handling the automatic budget cuts.þþApart from the furloughs, the F.A.A. counted more than 1,400 delays for weather and other reasons. On Tuesday, it said there were delays in the New York area and in Washington because of “staffing challenges,” but it did not say what fraction of the delays were due to furloughs. þþ“Travelers can expect to see a wide range of delays that will change throughout the day depending on staffing and weather-related issues,” the agency said in a statement. The staffing problems are mostly in radar rooms, not control towers, it added. þþThere are 30,000 to 35,000 commercial flights a day in the United States. Some travelers were delayed a few minutes, but others missed connections and were delayed for hours. Some later flights were delayed or canceled because the airplanes they were to use had arrived so late. þþFlightStats.com, a company that monitors airline performance, counted nearly 7,000 delays on Monday, from all causes. A company spokeswoman, Sarena Regazzoni, said that the number “seems heightened but not excessive.” þþSenator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the ranking Republican member, sent a letter to the transportation secretary, seeking more information and complaining that “the administration’s response to our inquiries has consistently been slow and disturbingly limited.” þþThe two senators said that the F.A.A. administrator, Michael P. Huerta, had provided “only general statements” to the committee about how it would handle budget cuts resulting from the so-called sequester, while giving a detailed briefing to the airlines. þþThe airlines, though, complained that their briefing was cursory. Airline officials said that the F.A.A. had passed out copies of an analysis of likely delays, but then demanded all the copies back. (In a news briefing last week, Mr. Huerta and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood displayed a complicated slide showing the projected impact at a variety of airports, but did not give out copies or post it on the Web, as is their usual practice.) þþBut those complaining about the cuts have not specified just where the F.A.A. should find the more than $600 million it says it must wring out of the system. þþThe air traffic controllers’ union, whose members are facing 11 unpaid days between now and the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, on Tuesday described the delays so far as “just the beginning of what promises to be a huge economic disruption if the furloughs are not stopped.” þþ“The F.A.A. has been forced to cancel all training, halt work on critical modernization and NextGen projects, and are even using overtime at some of the busiest facilities,” the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said. NextGen is a satellite-based system that is supposed to raise air traffic capacity and cut delays. þþUsing overtime “is actually costing the F.A.A. money, eliminating any savings that are supposedly being achieved for sequestration,” the union said. “It’s simple math — furloughing controllers earning base while paying others base pay plus an additional 50 percent will not result in savings.” þþSenator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, and Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, held a news briefing to urge the F.A.A. to delay the furloughs. This month, they introduced a bill to block the agency from shutting down control towers at dozens of small airports. þþSenator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, proposed that all of the across-the-board cuts be canceled for the rest of the fiscal year, and “paid for” by declining war spending — a position Republican budget hawks have long scoffed at. þþSenator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, objected, and the move died. But Democrats said the move would be the first in a revived effort to address cuts that are beginning to bite. þ
Source: NY Times
