WASHINGTON — The leaders of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration announced Sunday that they were ending flight restrictions at 40 airports that were imposed just over a week ago during the government shutdown, citing improved staffing levels among air traffic controllers.

In a statement, they said the FAA’s safety team had recommended the return to normal operations, which would begin at 6 a.m. Monday.

The decision “reflects the steady decline in staffing concerns,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said.

“Controllers have returned to their posts and normal operations can resume,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, praising President Donald Trump’s leadership. “Now we can refocus our efforts on surging controller hiring and building the brand-new, state of the artair traffic control system the American people deserve.”

But according to new numbers from the aviation data company Cirium, most of the airports that were subject to the flight restrictions had not been in full compliance with them for days. And as of 6:30 p.m. Sunday, when the restrictions specified flight reductions of 3%, just 0.25% of flights at the airports had been canceled.

The FAA said that it was “aware of reports of noncompliance by carriers over the course of the emergency order,” was reviewing them and would decide whether to enforce fines against the operators.

40 Airports Hit With Restrictions

Duffy and Bedford imposed flight restrictions at 40 airports Nov. 7, citing a rise in so-called staffing triggers, or delays forced by too many controller absences at an air traffic facility, among other worrisome data. The government shutdown had, at that point, lasted for more than five weeks, during which air traffic controllers had been forced to work without pay.

Airlines were first told to reduce traffic to and from those 40 airports by 4%, with plans to expand the cuts to 10% by last Friday. But last Wednesday, just hours before Trump signed a spending package that ended the shutdown, Duffy and Bedford announced they would freeze the restrictions at 6%. On Friday afternoon, they lowered the cuts to 3%, pledging to monitor the situation to see whether air traffic could return to normal.

In the days before Duffy and Bedford’s announcement, staffing triggers dropped. The FAA reported six triggers Friday, eight Saturday, and only one Sunday. That is a significant improvement over the previous weekend, when there were 45 staffing triggers on Nov. 7, 81 on Nov. 8 and 43 on Nov. 9.

But with the improvement in safety indicators, it appears that some airlines began to treat the FAA’s restrictions as more of a suggestion than a rule, despite the agency’s threat to fine airlines up to $75,000 for every flight operated above the mandated limits.

The Cirium data suggests that most of the 40 airports fell short of the cuts airlines were required to make beginning Wednesday, the day the shutdown ended. On Saturday, when the 3% restrictions took effect, only two airports — Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and Portland International Airport in Oregon— met the mark. On Sunday, none did.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Karoun Demirjian/Andrew Leyden
c. 2025 The New York Times Company