NEW YORK _ A shortage of air traffic controllers at airports in Florida and Washington, D.C., snarled flight traffic up and down the eastern seaboard Friday, causing temporary delays at LaGuardia and holding up planes in Newark and Philadelphia as well.
Flights were grounded at those three airports just before 10 a.m., leaving frustrated passengers unable to depart and affecting some incoming flights as well.
A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman blamed the air traffic controller shortage on "a slight increase in sick leave" at two facilities that caused a ripple effect up to New York _ but avoided mentioning the government shutdown that put an immense strain on federal employees working without pay.
Air traffic control centers in Jacksonville, Fla., and the D.C. region had the staffing shortages that brought about the domino effect, according to a New York airport official. There was no staffing shortage at LaGuardia, New York officials said.
The ground order was lifted about an hour later _ but it had already caused an average delay of roughly 90 minutes per flight at LaGuardia, according to an FAA's national airspace tracking system.
An air traffic controller union official said the had been sounding the alarm about delays and cancellations during the federal government shutdown.
"What we're seeing is what we warned would happened which is that in order to maintain safety and safe departures, you'll see a cutback in capacity," the official told the New York Daily News. "You'll see a slowdown in capacity which is how many flights can take off and land. They don't have enough people. It's just number of bodies. There's a scaling back. That may just lead to delays or it could lead to cancellations. The New York airspace is already extremely crowded."
The leader of the union for Transportation Security Administration workers, J. David Cox, said that mandatory overtime for airport workers already made the job stressful, "but being forced to work without pay has transformed the situation to one where the safety and security of the flying public is now at risk."
About 200 Delta airline flights were delayed at LaGuardia Airport, on top of disruptions on flights at other facilities in the Northeast, according to a statement from Delta.
Flyers, meanwhile, got short-tempered on the ramp as they waited for the all-clear.
"@LGAairport We have been sitting on the tarmac for 50 mins because of staff shortages in air traffic control. Flight landed 45 mins early too!" a Twitter user named Stacey Carey posted.
The government shutdown that deprived nearly 800,000 federal employees of their paychecks lasted 35 days, the longest in history.
The air traffic controllers union on Wednesday issued a joint statement with pilot and flight attendant unions with concern over safety of the traveling public and its workers.
"Staffing in our air traffic control facilities is already at a 30-year low and controllers are only able to maintain the system's efficiency and capacity by working overtime, including 10-hour days and 6-day workweeks at many of our nation's busiest facilities," said the statement from the unions' presidents.
An FAA spokesman said the situation was under control.
"We've mitigated the impact by augmenting staffing, rerouting traffic, and increasing spacing between aircraft when needed," FAA spokesman Gregory Martin said. "The results have been minimal impacts to efficiency while maintaining consistent levels of safety in the national airspace system."
