How might a gov't shutdown affect *returning* from overseas?

September 15, 2023 7:39 AM

At the moment, there's a realistic chance the U.S. government shuts down after Sept. 30. At that time, I will be overseas in Italy, with my return flight scheduled for Oct. 13. If a shutdown is still in effect by my return date, are there any issues I might expect with my return travel? (In case it matters, I will be flying from Milan to Newark.) Thank you.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

TSA and air traffic controllers in the US would still be working, but without pay. This did cause some travel delays during the 2018-2019 shutdown.
posted by the primroses were over at 7:48 AM on September 15, 2023

Essential employees (including TSA, ATC, and CBP) continue to work; they just don't get paid until the shutdown resolves. There may be skeleton staffing, so expect long lines.
posted by basalganglia at 7:49 AM on September 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

CBP will be essential workers. However, the whole mechanism will be more rickety during this time; there are bound to be some workers who decline to show up while their paychecks are delayed.
posted by praemunire at 7:52 AM on September 15, 2023

Most contractors will not be able to work unless the agency has structured their contracts in a specific way. Since the vast majority of the federal IT space is run by contractors, this means that if key systems go down, they may be down for far longer than they otherwise would be.
posted by rockindata at 9:02 AM on September 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Looks like things started to get pretty grim as the shutdown wore on last time, in 2019. Unsurprisingly, lots of workers refused to work while being forced to go without pay (how could you blame them?), and service started getting scaled back. Of course, that meant delays, but the bigger concern was safety. As one former TSA official put it, "Every day that goes by puts us a day or an hour closer to a potential bad thing happening."
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:32 PM on September 16, 2023