So the House has to do its work. And by the way, I am very hopeful.

However, today has been a much better day. A lot more air traffic controllers are coming in.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday -- very rough travel days, significant cancellations and significant delays.

If the government doesn't open, it is going to radically slow down.

the percentage of flights canceled could rise as high as 20% in the coming weeks

If we could deploy them, and I don’t know that we can, we got to see what air spaces they worked in, but he will step in and try to provide some relief in the skies

You’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle

It's only going to get worse

This is not political, this is strictly safety

And I'm doing what I can in a mess that Democrats have put in my lap.

This is not political

If people want to question us, I would throw it back at them: open up the government

You know, we have to take unprecedented action because we're in an unprecedented situation with the shutdown

We had seen the rolling staffing triggers that come from air traffic controllers — one day it was L.A., another day it was in New York, Minneapolis, Atlanta — and so as we were looking at data, we were seeing increased numbers in some of…

As that data came in we decided to make the decisions we thought were appropriate

I have done all I can to minimize disruption in the airspace. I'm trying to get people where they want to go and get them there safely

That pressure on the controllers were giving us numbers that were not troubling, but were concerning. So my job is to be preemptive

There is going to be a 10% reduction in capacity at 40 of our locations.

We are going to work with the airlines to do this in a systematic way.

You will see mass flight delays, you'll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it.

Many of the controllers said, ‘A lot of us can navigate missing one paycheck. Not everybody, but a lot of us can. None of us can manage missing two paychecks,’

We learned from that. And so now we look at data, and before it would become an issue, we try to assess the pressure and try to make moves before there could be adverse consequences.

U.S. may close parts of airspace if shutdown continues

There is going to be a 10% reduction in capacity at 40 of our locations.

These people should be paid. And to say that it's Donald Trump's fault, to say he has to find money, when Democrats have said there's no money for you because we've shut the government down, I mean, that's a contorted analysis.