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House Passes Bill To End Airport Delays

Brianna Sacks |
April 26, 2013 | 11:17 a.m. PDT

Editor-at-Large

(Long lines at San Fransisco Intl. Airport/Flickr)
(Long lines at San Fransisco Intl. Airport/Flickr)
Congress sent President Obama a bill on Friday to end furloughs of air traffic controllers brought on by budget cuts that caused long delays for thousands of passengers across the United States.

The vote came in 16 hours after the bill won unanimous support in the Senate, the Washington Post reported. The president said he would sign the bill to allow the Federal Aviation Administration to move $253 million from other accounts to keep air-traffic-control towers open at smaller airports and end the furloughs.

Ultimately, this is no more than a temporary Band-Aid that fails to address the overarching threat to our economy posed by the sequester’s mindless, across-the-board cuts,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The cuts caused by sequestration, which went into effect March 1, led to a shortage of 1,500 air-traffic controllers this week and caused thousands of delayed flights.

On its first day of staffing cuts last week, LAX experienced delays averaging more than three hours for flights arriving at the airport.

Mark Duell at the flight tracking website FlightAware said John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York indicated delays due to lower staffing starting late Sunday evening, CBS News reported.

The bill gives the Transportation Department budget planners new flexibility to keep airports from suffering even longer delays. It also protects 149 control lowers at small-and-medium airports that were slated to close all over the country.

Read more at the Washington Post.



 

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