Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Wednesday that if the government shutdown is not resolved, 10% of flight capacity at 40 major U.S. airports will be reduced starting Friday morning.

Duffy made the announcement alongside Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Brian Bedford at a press conference held in response to the fatal crash of a United Parcel Service (UPS) jet in Louisville, Kentucky. "We have learned that there is additional pressure being placed on the system," Duffy said.

Neither Duffy nor Bedford provided details on the 40 locations that will be affected by the capacity restrictions. The government shutdown, now in its 36th day, is straining the FAA as air traffic controllers have gone without pay for nearly five weeks, leading many to call out sick or take on side jobs to make ends meet.

"Our paramount priority is to ensure your safety," Duffy stated. "Therefore, we will discuss additional steps to reduce the level of risk in our national airspace."

"We anticipate that there will be additional disruptions," he said. "There will be a lot of inconvenience. We are working with the airlines, and the airlines will be working with their passengers. But ultimately, our sole role is to keep this airspace as safe as possible."

"One of the tools that will be deployed is to reduce capacity by 10% at 40 airports," Duffy added.

"This is not a function of which airline flies more flights in which particular market," he explained. "The important thing is where the pressure is occurring, and how we can alleviate that pressure."

Duffy was also reportedly told earlier this week that the FAA would have to close some airspace next week if the shutdown continued until then.

"What we have been monitoring on a daily, and frankly hourly, basis is the National Aviation System (NAS) and all of the indicators that we use to monitor its health and well-being," Bedford said. "Overall, I am pleased to report that from a safety indicator perspective, the NAS is operating as efficiently as it was prior to the onset of this event."

"But as we dig deeper into the data, we have discovered some implementation issues that are resulting in flight controllers experiencing fatigue," he added. "The more granular we get with the data, we can see that these pressures are increasing. If we do not address these pressures, we will not be able to continue to assure the public that we are operating the safest aviation system in the world."

Bedford said that the restrictions would extend beyond commercial airspace to include space launches, as well as VFR (Visual Flight Rules) traffic in certain markets where FAA controllers must continue to staff, and a number of measures to assure the public that they are maintaining the safest airspace in the world.

He was asked how officials arrived at the 10% figure and whether they considered higher or lower numbers.

"I can tell you that we have looked at the overall picture," he explained. "There's no perfect science, so we're looking very closely at where potential pressure points are forming and what we're seeing from the safety reporting of commercial air carriers' pilots. We are getting our information based on that information. And as we have worked through the details of 40 individual markets, we have determined that this is the appropriate next step. That does not mean that more action might be needed, or if we determine that we have overcorrected, that we can't certainly remove some of the mitigation."

By NNP Representative Reporter Hong Seong-gu / Special Correspondent for this newspaper NNP info@newsandpost.com