The House left on Friday without passing an extension of the funding of the FAA. As of midnight last night, July 23, 2011, the FAA is no longer funded. Only air traffic controllers are exempt. Here is the Bloomberg article and strangely the news as of yet has not been reported in other media outlets. The White House wanted a clean bill without provisions to close 10 small airports and projects purposely targeting Democratic committee members districts. The FAA has been operating since 2007 on funding extensions.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
The disagreement means the FAA has to furlough as many as 4,000 workers tomorrow and stop collecting about $200 million a week in airplane-ticket and other taxes until it is resolved, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said yesterday. Air- traffic controllers, considered essential employees, would remain on the job.
So as of midnight last night airlines can no longer charge the federal tax of about $50 per ticket. Go try and book a flight and you will see the federal fee has disappeared. Continental had their system ready to eliminate fees at around 1 AM last night. If you are flying while the FAA is shutdown, contact the airline to get reimbursed for the taxes you have already paid.
How safe is it to fly with only air-traffic controllers on the job? What if their systems go down? What if the controllers have problems and there is no HR to fire them or bring relief? How safe are airports where construction has abruptly stopped? Are the Republicans holding the safety of the American flying public hostage in the middle of summer vacation travel season?
11:10 AM PT: Rachel Maddow has a segment from Wednesday, July 21 on the GOP union busting proposals in the funding bill that is a must see. Thank you RockyMtnLib for find it.
GOP anti-union fervor threatens FAA
http://www.bing.com/...