Either staff have been instructed to spin the story or this is genuinely a nothing burger, I am not sure. But, there is just a minimal amount of foot traffic through Terminal A, which has been consistent for about the past two hours.
I asked a Jet Blue agent if this was a normal night, and she said yes, for a Tuesday. She also didn't see any difference in terms of air traffic controllers showing up to work. Yet, speaking to a TSA agent sheds a different light. "We have to work for fear of retribution," she told me, "even if we aren't getting paid."
I told the agent thank you for working and I hoped the government shutdown didn't last long.
As I look around me in the
airport, though, I cannot help but wonder if people are staying away for fear of another airline incident. I mean, who wants to get on a plane knowing the air traffic controllers aren't getting paid?
The
U.S. shutdown has entered its seventh day. It was just reported that across the country, in Burbank, the airport's control tower
went unmanned for several hours. ABC Eyewitness News in LA reports that "many of the 11,000 air traffic controllers" nationwide have called out sick.*
Certainly, that could be the case here and the nice people I spoke to would not know about it. Everyone here looks like they are doing their jobs, from TSA to the
American ticket agent. I can't speak for other airports.
Earlier in the day I'd seen about five National Guardspersons (mostly male but at least one female) having lunch at an upscale bistro in the area. No doubt, they were on their way to one of Trump's targeted cities -- Chicago or Portland.
*An earlier version of this post misstated that all 11,000 controllers had called out sick; ABC said that ‘many’ had, not all.
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