Ray LaHood and Michael Huerta released a letter today detailing the FAA's plan for handling the potential budget cuts. The plan includes shutting down 100 control towers and cutting shifts at 60 more towers, as well as furloughing 47,000 employees.
The actions would take place in April, the letter says. The new budget plan would save $600 million during the remainder of the year.
Obviously, this is quite a hit for the FAA and for the aviation industry as a whole. Customers can expect further air traffic delays, negating the FAA's plans for NextGen, a program implemented to reduce delays in the first place.
With NextGen put on hold, less air traffic controllers in the tower and a reduction in maintenance and support efforts for national air space equipment, aviation will be hurting.
Hopefully none of this has to happen and it's just a case of the industry preparing for the worse!
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