Major airlines say they are planning to cancel hundreds of flights on Friday — out of thousands of daily flights — as the Federal Aviation Administration is set to begin limiting flight capacity at 40 major U.S. airports amid the government shutdown.
American Airlines said Thursday it will cancel about 220 of its roughly 6,000 departures starting Friday and lasting through this weekend.
United Airlines said in a statement it plans to cancel less than 200 of its more than 5,000 flights each day through the weekend, focusing on those that have the smallest impact on passengers.
HPeople wait in the Terminal-A lobby at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport on November 06, 2025 in Houston, Texas. Federal Aviation Administrator Bryan Bedford has announced that the FAA will be reducing flights by 10 percent in 40 major airports around the country in an effort to keep airspace safe amid staffing shortages due to the government shutdown.
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Delta Airlines said it planned to cancel about 170 daily flights.
American, United and Delta — the three largest airlines in the U.S. — all have said they believe they will be able to accommodate most of the impacted passengers on other flights.
The cancellations are the latest — and perhaps biggest — disruption to air travel since the government shutdown began more than a month ago.
The FAA said earlier this week it was reducing flight capacity at 40 major airports across the country to alleviate staffing pressures. The reductions this weekend are starting out at 4% but will eventually climb to 10%, federal officials said.
Under an emergency order issued by the FAA on Thursday, airlines are required to reduce operations at the 40 “high-impact airports” by 6% by Nov. 11 and by 10% by Nov. 14. Any airline that does not comply will be fined $75,000 per flight over the limit, according to the FAA order.
United Airlines airplanes are stationed at terminal gates at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport on November 06, 2025 in Houston, Texas. Federal Aviation Administrator Bryan Bedford has announced that the FAA will be reducing flights by 10 percent in 40 major airports around the country in an effort to keep airspace safe amid staffing shortages due to the government shutdown.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
That announcement came after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier that the FAA would be forced to shut down the airspace in some areas if the shutdown continues into next week, warning of “mass chaos.”
Staffing shortages among air traffic controllers has been an ongoing concern and there have been scattered flight delays and cancellations over the past several weeks, as the shutdown has stretched on.
Last weekend, a surge in callouts among air traffic controllers led to strained staffing at multiple airports across the U.S. — including in the New York City area where 80% of controllers were absent at one point, the FAA reported.
Air traffic controllers, who are required to work without pay for the duration of the shutdown, are credited with helping end the most recent shutdown in 2019, when a series of absences delayed flights and heightened pressure on members of Congress.
Travelers wait in line to pass a security checkpoint at a San Francisco International Airport terminal in San Francisco, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Jeff Chiu/AP
The precise impact the flight cancellations will have on overall air travel is unclear.
“We’re not in the peak of summer, we’re not over a holiday period. So we feel confident that we have enough seats in these markets to accommodate all travelers,” United’s chief customer officer, David Kinzelman, told ABC News.
“There will not be chaos over the weekend,” he said, likening the impact of the reductions to a “medium-sized storm.”
He added, “We are going to cancel flights that we think have the least amount of disruption for customers. If you’re in a market with only two small regional flights and you cancel one or both of them, that’s a huge impact to that market. We want to avoid that. And so what we’re doing is really spreading it around the system.”
ABC News’ Ayesha Ali and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.
