How are Airlines Complying With the FAA's Flight Reduction Mandate During the Government Shutdown?

This Thursday, November 6th, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it would take steps to immediately reduce flights at 40 critical US airports by up to 10 percent in hopes of reducing strain on air traffic controllers, who continue to work without pay during the ongoing government shutdown.

I don’t really want to get into the politics of this decision… what I do want to get into is how airlines are choosing to respond to this order. As someone set to fly from LA to DC in the coming weeks, I feel like I have a vested interest!

Available Data

To their credit, United Airlines is the only airline that has publicly posted a list of all routes they have cut between Friday, November 7th and Sunday, November 9th, in response to the FAA notice.

Delta and American both put out press releases and have promised to notify and accomodate impacted passengers, but have not been as forthright in sharing the specific routes as United has been.

Findings

• All hubs see flight cuts, with volumes roughly proportionate to the size of the hub
• Cancellations are pretty broadly spread across the day, not concentrated in any particular time window
• The most common route distance being cut is 200-300 miles, with nearly all cancellations occurring for flights under 500 miles
• No flights longer than 1,200 miles have been canceled so far
• The routes seeing the sharpest cuts (which I’m defining as more than one frequency per day cancelled) all seem to be classic commuter “shuttle” flights, like DCA to EWR
• Colorado Springs to Denver is actually the sneaky #1, with 11 frequencies cancelled over the long weekend. Maybe not the craziest thing, considering the cities are only 70 miles apart!

Top Cancelled Routes

Visualizations

Summary Statistics

Maps