The Government Decides To Give Up Using Air Travel As A Pawn In Political Flight

It only took a little over a week, but the government made quick work of the furloughs that the FAA put in place for the air-traffic controllers.  Both houses of Congress acted quickly to pass a bill that essentially instructs the FAA to cease furloughs for air-traffic controllers.

In case you hadn’t heard, the FAA had decided they were required to furlough air-traffic controllers as part of their sequester cuts.  While there were plenty of informed arguments on the subject of whether they had to muck up the entire air travel system, the important part to take away is that starting Monday there should be no more problems with flight delays specifically caused by a lack of air-traffic controllers.

For my two cents, I’d say I’m a little surprised this was resolved so quickly since it felt like the Democrats wanted to use the visibility of this crisis as leverage to get what they wanted.  No specific political commentary here, just my surprise that everything fell into place so quickly.

I still think Ray LaHood is bad for, well, lots of things, but specifically the FAA.  A Secretary of Transportation that actually cared about transportation would have raised a huge stink about these problems sooner (or actually have chosen to rectify them).

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