Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is calling out the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration for blaming the weather for flight delays, instead blaming staffing levels and inexperience for the more 5,400 flight cancellations since Saturday.
“DOT is blaming weather. The reality is DOT has known since March it doesn’t have the controllers to handle air traffic in the Northeast,” the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. “The blame game doesn’t work when you’ve admitted fault from the beginning.”
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME PAYMENTS: HOW EXPERIMENTS SENDING PEOPLE MONEY HAVE WORKED OUT
DOT is blaming weather. The reality is DOT has known since March it doesn’t have the controllers to handle air traffic in the Northeast. The blame game doesn’t work when you’ve admitted fault at the beginning. https://t.co/MDYvWoYFET 2/x — Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 28, 2023
A series of flight cancellations began Sunday after the FAA briefly paused operations at Washington, D.C.-area airports due to a problem with the communications system. However, departures resumed after repairs were completed. After some storms in the New York area, United Airlines canceled more than 2,200 flights, including almost 800 on Tuesday. The airline also canceled 17 percent of its flights and delayed 34 percent on Wednesday.
In March, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called on airlines to reduce their flight schedules on the East Coast during the summer travel months, after the DOT sounded the alarm about low staffing levels at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility, which provides airspace support to airports across New York and New Jersey.
Cruz continues to sound the alarm about the situation. In April, he wrote a letter requesting information about the agency’s ability to address congestion and air traffic control shortages. A dispute in the Senate transportation committee over measures impacting pilot training has stalled progress toward FAA funding reauthorization, which is set to expire in September. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee has yet to reschedule the markup, and senators who serve on the panel have been unable to provide a timeline for the next steps.
“If you’re sitting on the tarmac at JFK, LaGuardia or Newark, you can thank politicians and special interests – who blew up the Committee’s mark up of a bipartisan FAA bill two weeks ago – for putting parochial interests ahead of the efficiency of our nation’s airspace,” Cruz said in the Twitter thread . “Staffing at FAA’s air traffic facilities in NY is at 54%. Yet DOT is blaming weather for delays. Nonsense,” he said in a subsequent tweet .
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby is also blaming the FAA, sending a memo to staff saying that weather in New York is “something that the FAA has historically been able to manage without a severe impact on our operation and customers.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The FAA issued a statement responding to Kirby’s letter.
“We will always collaborate with anyone seriously willing to join us to solve a problem,” the agency said.