Air traffic control shortage could ruin Memorial Day travel

Traveling this long weekend? Get ready to hurry up and wait.

AAA expects Memorial Day weekend will be the third busiest for travel overall since the agency started tracking that metric in 2000 — with the company’s senior vice-president of travel predicting this summer will be “one for the record books, especially at airports.”

But a major staffing shortage of air traffic controllers could fuel another summer of airport headaches.

“Our air travel system is struggling to handle the demand,” Geoff Freeman, CEO of the US Travel Association, told reporters last month, warning of a “stressed” aviation system poised to again frustrate travelers.

And while Rob Britton, a longtime American Airlines executive and a professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, expects this year’s air travel “will be better than last summer,” he also warned: “There’s going to inevitably be disappointments.”

“The airline industry in the US has largely solved most of the staffing shortages that happened last year,” Britton told The Post. “Instead, it’s shaping up that the major disruptions this summer … will be on the FAA, let’s be very clear about that.”

Hopes of a smooth-sailing summer season faded a bit in late March, when the FAA issued a memo warning air traffic control staffing shortages could fuel increased delays, particularly at New York’s three major airports.

JFK, LaGuardia and Newark serve as critical airline hubs for the rest of the country — and, indeed, much of the world.

Nationwide, the memo said, certified air traffic controller staffing sits at just 81%.

The problem is even greater at the FAA’s critical New York Terminal Radar Approach Control facility — known in the industry as TRACON — where staffing stands at just 54% of the FAA’s target.

All of this could cause cascading delays, especially up and down the East Coast — and particularly when summer thunderstorms complicate operations, said air traffic control veteran Michael McCormick, who previously managed New York’s TRACON facility.

“When you have reduced staffing levels, you lose some of your resiliency and flexibility,” McCormick explained.“Therefore, you have to rely on constraints to bring the demand levels down, and to move aircraft into less constrained airspace.”

For passengers, those “constraints” equate to more time circling in the air, sitting on the tarmac or waiting at the gate.

In fact, delays have remained a problem even as cancellations have dropped sharply from last year: Between January and mid-May, data from flight-tracking site FlightAware showed delays affected more than a fifth of US airline flights, up from the same period both last year and in 2019.

And there isn’t an immediate fix.

The FAA sits near a 30-year low in the number of fully-certified air traffic controllers, National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Rich Santa testified to Congress on March 23.

The problem is driven, Santa said, by both missed hiring goals by the FAA between 2012 and 2015 and pandemic training backlogs — not to mention the fact that training controllers takes years, not months.

Warning that delays could spike 45% in New York this summer, the FAA relaxed “slot” rules that typically see airlines forfeit unused gate and runway space in the region.

It’s a step that could help reduce congestion … but it’s only a temporary solution to the larger problem. 

“It’s the overwhelming issue that we need to solve,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said on NBC’s “Today” show May 23, largely reiterating calls he and other aviation sector leaders have made for stepped-up FAA funding in recent months, amid Congress’ ongoing consideration of the FAA’s next multi-year budget reauthorization.

Last year’s Memorial Day weekend led to piled-up flight cancellations and stranded travelers — and that was just the beginning.

Between 2022’s unofficial summer kickoff and the Fourth of July, US-based carriers canceled more than 26,000 flights, sowing discontent among customers and drawing White House scrutiny.

A year later, the numbers point to marked improvements, albeit with travelers bearing the scars of Southwest Airlines’ holiday meltdown and a January computer outage at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that triggered the first nationwide ground stop since 9/11.

From January to mid-May of this year, US airlines canceled 1.4% of flights.

That’s down sharply from 2.8% during that same period a year ago, according to FlightAware data.

Hiring staff has been a big part of that recovery, after deficits — particularly a pilots shortage — contributed significantly to last summer’s challenges.

Airlines now employ more workers than any year since 2001, a trade group for the largest US carriers said this week.

Good thing: The 10 busiest days for air travel since the start of the pandemic have come since mid-March, according to TSA data analyzed by The Post.

At least 2.6 million passengers passed through the agency’s checkpoints on three separate days this month, a benchmark not previously reached since 2019.

And there’s no signs of the trend slowing.

To combat the traffic, the FAA also recently announced 169 new flight paths to help improve “flexibility” in the corridor, US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said this month.

And experts believe when things do go wrong this summer, the system will recover.

“This year will be different than last year in that you will not see the meltdowns … that lasted for several days,” McCormick said. “The airlines and FAA have collaborated in order to prevent those.”

But, he cautioned: “Expect delays. Have snacks, have books … download movies, and try to make the most of it.”