US: Why airlines keep flying during government shutdown

Airlines will fly the friendly skies without obvious changes during the federal government shutdown because air-traffic controllers at the FAA and TSA checkpoint officers are classified essential workers. But TSA administrator David Pekoske said a shutdown creates anxiety and the planning takes attention away from security screening. “All checkpoints will remain open,” Pekoske said. But he said there would be an impact because acquisition officials and other support functions would stop going to work. “What a shutdown does is you spend a lot of time planning and recovering from a shutdown,” Pekoske said. “That’s in my view a loss of time. We’re busy all the time.” Essential workers who report to their jobs typically are paid retroactively, whenever Congress resolves its spending dispute. TSA estimated 52,629 of its 58,007 workers, plus federal air marshals, are exempt from a lapse in funding because they are necessary to protect life and property such as processing passengers, according to a Department of Homeland Security plan. Likewise, 54,461 of the 58,872 workers at Customs and Border Protection keep working during a lapse in funding as law-enforcement officers or because of functions such as inspecting cargo at ports of entry, according to the plan. The 25,127 workers in FAA’s air-traffic organization are exempted from furloughs during a temporary lapse in funding, according to a Transportation Department plan. But that unpredictability in federal funding is a major reason why airlines and lawmakers have proposed to move air-traffic controllers out of the FAA to a non-profit corporation overseen by industry members. The opponents of privatizing controllers worry that removing the system from congressional oversight could leave travelers and lawmakers with nowhere to go with complaints about problems.<br/>