Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that travel will be “reduced to a trickle” ahead of Thanksgiving, warning that many will not be able to spend the holiday with their families.
“We have a number of people who want to get home for the holidays, they want to see their family, they want to celebrate this great American holiday,” Duffy said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Listen, many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up. We have controllers who, again, are making decisions to feed their families, as opposed to come to towers or TRACONs or centers and do their jobs.”
Duffy added that he believes the number of people who will not be able to see their families for Thanksgiving “is going to be substantial.”
The transportation also reiterated that the goal of the flight reduction is to ensure safety.
“The problem is that as I try to reduce the pressure by lowering flights, I have more controllers that keep not coming to work, and so the pressure goes back up again,” he said. “And so I’m critically aware of that pressure of rising risk and trying to take that out of the system.”
