Transportation Secretary Dodges Question About ‘Safety’ of Flying amid Government Shutdown

Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy was asked a pointed question about how safe flying is amid the air travel chaos caused by the government shutdown in a Nov. 11 press conference. 

Duffy spoke at Chicago O’Hare International Airport to share the travel update amid the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, which began on Oct. 1. After noting that flights were reduced by 4% over the weekend as a matter of safety, Duffy added, “Today we increased it by another 2%, so we’re at 6% of cancellations of flights in the airspace.”

He then took questions from the press, during which one attendee asked about possible near misses between aircrafts and what specifically the DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is doing “to prevent an aircraft fatality or something that would really be catastrophic.”

After acknowledging that there’s a “sign of more risk in the system,” Duffy said frankly: “Listen, you can walk outside. I can’t guarantee your safety. You get in your car, I mean, I can’t guarantee safety. But I have to look at the risk in this system and then we have to make decisions based on that risk and based on that pressure. And that’s what we’ve done here.”

He then emphasized that there’s been “a lot of conversations and analysis” that have led the DOT and FAA to make these decisions, based on the “information and controllers we have.”

Duffy then wraps up his response to the question by saying safety is always the department’s top priority. 

“But to be clear, we are concerned about people having flights delayed and having their flights canceled. That’s the problem — but that is a secondary problem to safety. Safety is the number one issue. I want you to get safely to where you’re flying. That is issue number one.”

The conference comes after the FAA announced in a press release on Thursday, Nov. 6 that they were implementing a temporary 10% reduction in flights at 40 “high traffic” airports across the country. 

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“Since the beginning of the shutdown, [air traffic] controllers have been working without pay, and staffing triggers at air traffic facilities across the country have been increasing. This has resulted in increased reports of strain on the system from both pilots and air traffic controllers,” the release added of the cause for such flight reductions.    

Earlier in an Oct. 31 statement on X, the FAA said at least 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks.