Yesterday was a pretty eventful day at Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR), and not in a good way…
In this post:
Burbank Airport tower unstaffed amid government shutdown
The government has been shut down for nearly a week now, meaning that most federal workers aren’t getting paid. As you’d expect, at some point this impacts peoples’ willingness to go to work, with an increasing number of sick calls.
This can also impact aviation, and particularly, air traffic control staffing, given the stress the system is under even when things are operating smoothly. As an example of that, on Monday, October 6, 2025, the air traffic control tower at Hollywood Burbank Airport was unstaffed for a period of nearly six hours, from 4:15PM until 10PM.
During that time, there were no controllers in the air traffic control tower, but instead, operations were run remotely by Southern California TRACON, an approach and departure team out of San Diego. While these controllers remotely handle traffic in Southern California, it’s rare to see them performing tower functions at commercial airports.
Now, it’s worth acknowledging that there are commercial airports with unstaffed towers over certain hours. However, that’s almost never the case at airports of this size, during a busy afternoon bank of flights.
These staffing issues caused widespread flight delays of several hours, and even cancellations. While having zero people in the air traffic control tower is rare, Burbank isn’t the only airport that saw staffing shortages yesterday, as there were also issues at airports like Denver (DEN), Detroit (DTW), Indianapolis (IND), and Phoenix (PHX).
As US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy describes this:
“We are tracking sick calls, sick leave. Have we had a slight tick up in sick calls? Yes. And then you’ll see delays that come from that, right? Because again, our priority, again, I want to see your flight not be delayed. I don’t want you canceled, but our priorities are safety. So if we have additional sick calls, we will reduce the flow consistent with a rate that’s safe for the American people.”
Aviation could impact government shutdown timeline
It’s anyone’s guess how the current government shutdown situation plays out. As you’d expect, our aviation infrastructure is critically important, and any impact on aviation will be felt pretty directly by the public.
It’s worth noting that during the last government shutdown during a Trump presidency, in 2018-2019, aviation played a major part in bringing it to an end. That shutdown had lasted over a month, and increased sick calls from air traffic controllers were reportedly a key factor in ending the shutdown.
So while air traffic controllers do technically have to show up to work, that’s not to say that they won’t call in sick. Given that the system has virtually no buffer, even a minimal number of sick calls can put serious strain on the system.
Air traffic controllers are expected to get a partial paycheck on October 14, and then on October 28, they’re projected to get no paycheck at all. When you consider that air traffic controllers work incredibly long hours, it’s understandable that many just can’t bring themselves to show up when they can’t even pay their bills.
So we’ll see if aviation plays a factor in ending the shutdown this time around, or not.
Bottom line
The tower at Hollywood Burbank Airport was unstaffed for around six hours yesterday afternoon, due to staffing shortages. During that time, operations were run remotely by Southern California TRACON. This seems to be a symptom of the government shutdown, as we’ll certainly see an increase in sick calls.
We’ll see if aviation has an impact in ending this shutdown, as it did with the last major one.
What do you make of Burbank Airport operating without anyone in the tower?
Didn't some famous guy say in like 2011 or 2013 that a government shutdown is a failure of leadership on the part of the President? I wonder where that guy is now.
That is not at all what President Trump meant! Obviously you have not read the entire text. This is 100 percent on the democrats!
This is 100% on both parties. Every single member of Congress and the President. The looming budget deadline was not a secret, yet they all decided to do nothing but try for a continuing resolution and then negotiate. They should have spent the summer negotiating, so that a budget would be done before there was any risk of a shutdown. Every single member of Congress should be barred from running again.
Republicans refuse to negotiate and when the Democrats don't immediately capitulate to their every demand you idiots go BoTh SiDeS
So where's the AI that can allegedly take over in a hot minute?
Where's Trump to fire us all and install readily available replacements... like Reagan.
Yeah, didn't think so.
I flew private over the weekend and there were multiple frequencies at various facilities that were unmonitored while at others a single controller was giving nonstop directions (breaks only long enough for the receiving aircraft to acknowledge).
Selfie or it didn't happen.
oh, I have pics but, sadly, I can't add them to the comments section
In all previous shutdowns, everybody got backpay, including non-essential government workers. So these atc are jealous because they won't get paid more for showing up. Greed.
But I guess many of the federal workers not being paid also don’t have to work. ATCs do have to work but with pay down the track.
Kind of a weird way to flip the script. Public servants aren't getting paid on time but let's make them out to be the problem here. Nice!
Anyway, as a top 10% earner in the government and someone who relies on OT to fund my lifestyle, to say I'm "jealous" of those staying home would be inaccurate. And if greed *was* at play for my fellow controllers at BUR, you could hardly blame them. Take...
Kind of a weird way to flip the script. Public servants aren't getting paid on time but let's make them out to be the problem here. Nice!
Anyway, as a top 10% earner in the government and someone who relies on OT to fund my lifestyle, to say I'm "jealous" of those staying home would be inaccurate. And if greed *was* at play for my fellow controllers at BUR, you could hardly blame them. Take a look around, our society is built on greed. At this point it's so embedded that if you don't take advantage when you can, you're a sucker.
Furloughed federal workers aren't guaranteed compensation for their forced time off during the government shutdown, according to a draft White House memo described to Axios by three sources.
"With staff being unpaid we see an increasing rate of sick calls"
Can someone explain to me (absolutely not familiar with the US) whether staff is really expected to come to work while they're not paid? Sounds to me like if you're not paid nobody is expecting you to show up, full stop (I wouldn't even expect people to call sick). Am I missing something?
In short, yes. Essential services like TSA, ATC, Military, CBP etc must still report to work during shutdowns. Their pay will be issued retroactive when the shutdown ends. Given that this is happening more often this century it's hoped that these workers are keeping at least a month in savings on reserve and are able to contact credit cards, loans, and rental/mortgage fees to be deferred. It's a hardship if it extends on more than...
In short, yes. Essential services like TSA, ATC, Military, CBP etc must still report to work during shutdowns. Their pay will be issued retroactive when the shutdown ends. Given that this is happening more often this century it's hoped that these workers are keeping at least a month in savings on reserve and are able to contact credit cards, loans, and rental/mortgage fees to be deferred. It's a hardship if it extends on more than a few weeks. That's when ATC and TSA start really seeing the increase of workers calling in sick. Can't blame them if this drags on for over 2-3 weeks. Calling in sick allows for gig work like Uber to quickly get some cash instead of showing up for work.
Although this is clearly a case of shutdown affecting things, you do know that there are certain commercial airports that are untowered after certain hours, right?
@ Eric Schmidt -- Absolutely, but not airports with the traffic levels you'd find in Burbank on an afternoon.
London City Airport (LCY) air traffic controllers operate from a remote digital control center in Swanwick, Hampshire, over 90 miles away, instead of a physical tower. Landing the planes must not be that difficult. But they have am unstaffed tower with 16 high-definition cameras and two pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras that are used to move them around once on the ground. How was that done at Burbank? (Not that it makes much difference, if Delta has...
London City Airport (LCY) air traffic controllers operate from a remote digital control center in Swanwick, Hampshire, over 90 miles away, instead of a physical tower. Landing the planes must not be that difficult. But they have am unstaffed tower with 16 high-definition cameras and two pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras that are used to move them around once on the ground. How was that done at Burbank? (Not that it makes much difference, if Delta has two planes near each other.)
JetBlue 358, an A220, arrived 19 minutes late after an on-time departure from JFK at 8:24pm.
The Ground Delay Program came out at 3:50 pm PDT. JBU358 was already airborne at 2:30 pm PDT, so it was not affected by delays.
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