Air traffic controllers are still guiding the skies, but without pay and under mounting strain as the government shutdown drags on.
“We had a partial paycheck last time, so air traffic controllers have worked over 120 hours now with no pay. The tension is at an all-time high,” Nick Daniels, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, or NATCA, told NBC News on Wednesday.
“Air traffic controllers are not only stressed, they’re not only fatigued, they’re angry. They’re upset,” Daniels said.
With “no end in sight,” he warned that air travel could become less safe each day the shutdown continues.
“When an air traffic controller isn’t 100% focused on the job that they do day in and day out, that puts the system at risk,” he said. “And every day that this drags on, that risk increases in the system.”
According to the Department of Transport, over 13,000 controllers are expected to remain on duty without pay through the government shutdown.
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Controllers missed their first full paychecks on October 28, following a partial payment in mid-October for work completed before the shutdown started.
Earlier this month, Daniels told Business Insider that some airline pilots and flight attendants have sent free food to air traffic controllers amid the shutdown.
Several air traffic controllers previously told Business Insider that they don’t want to be used as political bargaining chips — they just want to do their jobs and be paid fairly for it.
“We want to continue to perform for the American people,” Peter LeFevre, a Washington, D.C.-based controller and union representative, told Business Insider, “but we don’t want the financial uncertainty in the back of our minds when we should be 100% focused on the work we do.”
Representatives for the NATCA and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider outside regular hours.
