Travel to the United States: Part of the airspace could be closed due to the "shutdown"

The US Secretary of Transportation warned on Tuesday of the risks of "chaos" in air traffic, with partial closures of airspace if the budget paralysis continues into next week.

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"You will see widespread chaos," Sean Duffy said. "You will see mass flight delays. You will see mass cancellations. And you may see us close parts of the airspace simply because we won't be able to manage it due to a lack of air traffic controllers," he said at a press conference in Philadelphia, blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown.

Since October 1st and the expiration of the federal budget, Republican and Democratic senators have been unable to agree on a new bill to end the crisis. After midnight on Tuesday night, the record for the longest such deadlock will be broken.

As a result of the "shutdown", tens of thousands of air traffic controllers and security personnel are working without pay, with both sides blaming each other for the situation.

“More than 13,000 air traffic controllers continue to work without pay because of the Democrats,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated. “I want to be clear to our incredible air traffic controllers across the country: President Trump and the Republicans want you to get paid.”

Sick leave among employees in the sector and longer queues at airports had prompted elected officials to find a solution during the previous shutdown, during Donald Trump's first term, which ended in 2019.

For now, in Congress, the positions of the two sides remain unchanged.

Republicans are proposing an extension of the current budget, with the same levels of spending, and Democrats are calling for an extension of subsidies for health insurance programs for low-income households.

In addition to public employees whose duties were deemed "essential" and who were forced to work without pay, hundreds of thousands of civil servants were placed on furlough.