How Congress can prevent the next shutdown from blowing up air travel

Summer 2026 saw record air travel, and Labor Day weekend could be the busiest in our skies to date. Congress, meanwhile, will soon approach another round of budget deadlines, with lawmakers poised to again use the threat of a government shutdown as leverage in their political infighting.

I have no doubt the Federal Aviation Administration and the airline industry are holding their breath.

Given the enormous strain placed on aviation operations during previous government shutdowns, and with skyrocketing fuel costs from the war in Iran now placing major financial pressure on the airline industry, it is remarkable that Congress has still not insulated the FAA from future funding lapses.

The need for stable aviation funding is especially urgent now. And the agency responsible for managing our nation’s airspace should not have to face the threat of disrupted funding every time Congress approaches another budget deadline, nor should air traffic controllers, TSA officers, and Customs and Border Patrol personnel serving airports across the country serve as pawns in political battles in Washington.

Anyone who traveled over the holidays last year likely remembers how badly the 2025 shutdown disrupted airports and flights. Passengers waited hours in TSA lines . Seemingly every other flight was delayed or cancelled. All told, air traffic control staffing shortages caused by the 2025 shutdown led to 15,600 flight delays and 7,100 cancellations, affecting more than six million passengers. Combined with this year’s Department of Homeland Security shutdown, the disruptions imposed more than $6 billion in economic costs .

The unfortunate sequence begins when Congress allows air traffic controllers, Transportation Security Administration Officers, and Customs and Border Protection officers to go days, then weeks, and eventually months without pay. All are classified as essential personnel and therefore must continue reporting for duty even after their regular paychecks stop coming in. They eventually receive back pay, but that does little to help with everyday bills that remain due.

Predictably, as missed paychecks accumulate and inevitable burnout sets in, so do employee callouts, leaving federal aviation facilities without workers they cannot readily replace. Given that our air traffic control system is already short thousands of controllers under normal circumstances, it takes only a modest increase in absences to create a much larger problem.

The FAA cannot maintain normal traffic levels when too few controllers are available, so it reduces the number of flights moving through affected airspace. Airlines are then forced to delay departures, cancel service, reposition aircraft, and rebook passengers. From there, the disruption spreads: late aircraft miss subsequent departures, flight crews reach federal limits on working hours, and planes end the day in the wrong cities.

Meanwhile, increasing callouts among TSA and Customs and Border Patrol officers cause hours-long security lines and slower customs processing. Anyone waiting on a package may be waiting longer, too, since cargo carriers depend on the same airspace and many of the same federal personnel.

Perhaps worse, repeated shutdowns are now pushing people out of federal aviation altogether.

Over a thousand TSA officers have left following the recent funding lapses, while prospective air traffic controllers are being asked to enter careers in which unrelated political disputes may periodically interrupt their paychecks. It is easy to understand why some decide to look elsewhere.

By allowing politically motivated shutdown fights to interrupt pay for essential FAA employees, Congress is making these careers less attractive precisely when the agency desperately needs to recruit and train thousands of new controllers.

In the near term, Congress can complete the fiscal year 2027 appropriations process through regular order and provide full-year funding for federal aviation programs without delay. And if lawmakers cannot finish before the deadline, they should pass a continuing resolution to prevent another lapse.

But Congress can, and should, do much more than survive its next deadline.

The Airport and Airway Trust Fund already collects ticket taxes, aviation fuel taxes, and other fees paid by users of the aviation system. Giving the FAA access to those funds during a lapse would keep controllers paid and normal operations intact while preserving Congress’s existing oversight authority.

The same principle should extend to TSA and Customs and Border Patrol, which could continue paying essential personnel through existing user fees. Aviation functions as an interconnected system, and insulating the FAA alone would accomplish little if security checkpoints and customs operations remained vulnerable to the same funding dispute.

We have all seen, or experienced, the consequences of allowing Congress’s shutdown fights to spill into our nation’s airports. Continuing to subject the same workers, travelers and businesses to the same avoidable disruption would be foolish, especially when a practical safeguard is already available.

Regular-order appropriations remain the immediate priority, but stable access to existing aviation funds must become the long-term safeguard. Congress should do both and stop making the normal operation of our airspace contingent on its ability to meet another budget deadline.

Ken Blackwell is the chair of Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute. He is also former Ohio secretary of state, former mayor of Cincinnati a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and co-chairman of the U.S. Census Monitoring Board.