KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Salt Lake City International Airport faces ongoing flight cancellations despite government reopening.
- Thirty-one flights were canceled Thursday, following over 100 last week due to cuts.
- FAA plans to cap service cuts at 6%, instead of up to 10%.
SALT LAKE CITY — The federal government has officially reopened after its longest shutdown in history, but Salt Lake City International Airport officials say passengers should still brace for flight cancellations for the foreseeable future.
Thirty-one flights scheduled to arrive or depart the airport on Thursday were canceled, even after President Donald Trump signed the bill reopening the government on Wednesday night.
It follows over 100 additional cancellations over the past week. The Federal Aviation Administration announced last week that it would reduce flights at 40 airports across the country, including Salt Lake City, to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who had worked without pay after the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
Salt Lake City International Airport officials said on Thursday that they still expect more flights to be canceled because they aren’t sure when the policy will be reversed.
“There is no indication yet of when we will see a change in this plan, though it was previously reported (that) it would take a couple of weeks for the system to return to normal after the government reopens. We will continue to monitor developments,” they said in a statement.
The shutdown’s end has, however, helped reduce the severity of the cuts. The plan started with a 4% reduction in service at the 40 major airports before rising to as much as 10% by this weekend. The FAA now plans to cap the cuts at 6% with the government reopened.
Federal officials say they’ll track safety conditions before lifting the cuts.
“If the FAA safety team determines the trend lines are moving in the right direction, we’ll put forward a path to resume normal operations,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in a statement on Wednesday.
Salt Lake City hasn’t been the only airport in the state impacted by the flight reductions. Even on Thursday, flights connecting Utah’s capital to St. George and Cedar City were among the reductions.
Contributing: Associated Press
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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