A senior controller at one of the West Coast's busiest facilities says sequester-related issues and delays will only get worse as increasing demand meets diminished capacity throughout the system. For the third straight day since one-day-in-10 furloughs have been in place for air traffic controllers, significant delays have been reported at major airports all over the U.S., and Scott Conde, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association at Oakland Center in California, said the true impact has been barely felt. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," he said in a podcast interview. Conde said the sequester-related staffing cuts came between Easter and summer, normally the time when staffing is at its maximum and there's a slight lull in air traffic. Once summer vacations further diminish the ranks of controllers and traffic increases, the delays will almost certainly be much worse. He also expects the stress and long hours experienced by controllers will also start to take their toll, adding to the existing problems.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/news/flight-delays-will-worsen-says-natca-rep