Sean Duffy, US secretary of transportation, during a news conference at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025.
Ryan Collerd | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Wednesday afternoon that he will be reducing flight capacity by 10% at 40 major airports starting on Friday morning, affecting roughly 3,500 to 4,000 flights daily.
It was not immediately clear which airports would be affected.
“This is proactive,” Duffy said in a news conference.
Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said additional measures could be taken after the initial reduction.
“As we slice the data more granularly, we are seeing pressures build in a way that we don’t feel if we allow it to go unchecked will allow us to continue to tell the public that we operate the safest airline system in the world,” Bedford said on Wednesday.
Bedford added that the administration will be meeting with the airline community to decide how to move forward on implementing the reduction, which he said has never happened before during his time in the industry.
Duffy said he expects more cancellations as a result of the reduction, which has no set end time.
“We thought 10% was the right number based on the pressure we were seeing,” Duffy added.
The move comes as air traffic controllers have missed their paychecks due to the government shutdown, which became the longest in history on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Duffy told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he could “shut the whole airspace down” if the shutdown drags on.
On Wednesday morning, National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels told CNBC‘s “Squawk Box” that it could take “weeks to recover” from the impacts of the government shutdown on air traffic controllers.
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