Get ready for flight delays and more sitting out on the tarmac for hours if automated federal budget cuts take place this coming Friday, March 1, according to NPR. Congress will have to act in order for this s0-called sequestration to be averted.
All federal agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), will take a haircut in their spending if Washington doesn’t come to a consensus about the federal budget and the deficit.
The head of the Office of Management and Budget told the Senate last week, according to NPR, that the FAA will lose $600 million in funding is the slated federal budget cutbacks go forward. That will force the FAA to put most of its 47,000 employees on a furlough one day a week for the rest of the year.
That means that air traffic controllers will have to take this forced day, for example, as well as FAA technicians, who monitor and fix equipment such as radar and navigation systems.
What this will add up to, in a nutshell, is delays in your flights because of this diminished staffing.