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Nov. 7, 2025, 12:00 AM EST / Updated Nov. 7, 2025, 2:15 PM ESTBy Rob WileThe U.S. Department of Transportation is ordering airlines to begin reducing flight schedules at 40 “high traffic” airports by 10%, as the government shutdown approaches a record-40th day.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the cuts are designed to “alleviate the pressure” on air traffic controllers who are now working without pay due to lapses in federal funding. FAA administrator Bryan Bedford says the restrictions — which will begin Friday — are needed to maintain safety because “fatigue” is hitting air traffic controllers.Major carriers announced that they will begin implementing schedule changes in the coming days.But analysts caution that the situation remains subject to change, and stressed that airline ticket holders should check directly with carriers for the latest updates to their travel.So what happens if your flight is affected? Passengers will be eligible for refunds if their flight is cancelled due to the government shutdown and they choose not to accept a rebooked flight. Major carriers are required to automatically rebook passengers whose flights are canceled at no charge — or refund the airfare if the passenger decides not to accept the new flight.Many major airlines are also waiving change fees and penalties for passengers who are looking to switch their flights on their own, though some carriers are applying limits. United Airlines has issued a waiver for select flights departing between Nov. 6 – 13, but said rebooked flights must be on United and must depart within a specific window that covers the six days on either side of the original travel date.The United waivers and refund policies will even apply to passengers who have non-refundable or basic-economy tickets.American Airlines’ change-fee waiver also applies to all fare levels for affected flights between Nov. 7 – 14, but only for passengers who are able to travel by Nov. 16.

- Latest News - November 8, 2025

Most airline passengers will be eligible for refunds if their flights are affected by the government shutdown.

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Nov. 7, 2025, 4:49 PM EST / Updated Nov. 7, 2025, 6:01 PM ESTBy Corky SiemaszkoFlying anywhere for the Thanksgiving holiday is likely to be tortuous for legions of travelers — even if the government shutdown ends today, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Friday.Hundreds of flights during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year could be affected by staffing shortages of air traffic controllers. The shortages have been exacerbated by the shutdown, prompting the Federal Aviation Administration to implement unprecedented flight reductions.Follow live coverage here. And those staff shortages — at least for now — appear to be set in stone for Thanksgiving, Duffy said.’It’s been awful’: Passengers experience rough travels amid FAA flight disruptions03:36″So if the government opens on day one, will I see an immediate response from controllers? No, the union is telling me it’s going to take time to get them all back in,” Duffy told CNN on Friday when asked if the flight reductions would spill into the holiday. “I don’t wish this was the circumstance in which I was dealing with,” he said. “So I imagine, as we see the data change and more controllers come to work, we are as quickly as possible going to take these restrictions away.”The FAA announced it would begin cutting the number of flights in the “high traffic” parts of the country while the government shutdown grinds on and local airports contend with the staffing shortages.The flight reductions went into effect Friday, on Day 38 of the federal government shutdown, now the longest such shutdown in U.S. history.The FAA is requiring 4% of flights in and out of 40 of the nation’s busiest airport to be cut and that percentage will gradually increase to 10% by next Friday.Duffy, in an interview Friday with Fox News, also raised the possibility of reducing up to 20% of flights at some airports. “I don’t want to see that,” he said. The airports facing reductions include Chicago O’Hare, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Miami International Airport and all three New York-area airports.FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Thursday the move to reduce the number of flights was sparked by “fatigue” plaguing air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay since the start of the shutdown.Bedford said airports across the country were already contending with staffing shortages before most government operations ground to a halt.Air traffic controllers are considered essential workers and are not allowed to walk off their jobs. But they’re also exhausted, said Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.“It’s unprecedented to go through two full paychecks, 37 days, and receive no compensation,” he said Thursday. “So it’s not a matter of calling in sick. They’re calling their employer and saying, ‘I don’t have gas. I have not received pay in 37 days. What do you want me to do?’”Patrick Penfield, a Syracuse University professor of supply chain practice, said cutting flights could also make it harder for retailers to replenish their stocks of “hot” items for the holiday season.”Forty percent to 50% of all air freight is shipped in the belly of passenger planes,” Penfield said. “If you eliminate 10% of airline capacity, air freight prices will rise, and we could see delays in getting materials via air.”Corky SiemaszkoCorky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital.Jay Blackman contributed.

- Latest News - November 8, 2025

Flying anywhere for the Thanksgiving holiday is likely to be tortuous for legions of travelers — even if the government shutdown ends today, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned on Friday

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Nov. 8, 2025, 11:07 AM ESTBy Freddie ClaytonLONDON — It’s been a strange sort of prison break: no daring escapes, no Hollywood getaways — just inmates quietly released, by mistake, onto the streets of Britain.What once might have been an isolated blunder comes at an unwelcome time in a country strained by rising prices, stagnant wages and crumbling public services.One man, an Algerian sex offender, was arrested in London on Friday after being freed in error nine days earlier; another, a British national and convicted fraudster, accidentally released from the same prison shortly afterward and turned himself in on Thursday.Their cases followed the mistaken release of a convicted sex offender from a separate prison in October, which sparked a three-day manhunt before he was rearrested.At least four prisoners released in error over the past year remain at large, the BBC reports. More than 260 were wrongly released in England and Wales in the year to March, official data shows — more than double the figure the year before.Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy said on X Friday that he was “appalled at the rate of releases in error,” and had ordered “tough new release checks, launched an investigation, and started overhauling archaic prison systems.”He told Parliament on Wednesday that the opposition Conservative Party, whose 14-year spell in government was ended by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last year, had “left our prisons on the brink of collapse entirely.”But the recent litany of errors coincides with the ruling Labour Party battling its own economic constraints and record-setting unpopularity.British prisons have been in a state of crisis for several years, with the prison population more than doubling in size since 1990, while staffing and infrastructure struggle to keep pace.The Algerian offender, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was mistakenly let out on Oct. 29, though police say they weren’t informed until nearly a week later. He was rearrested for being unlawfully at large and on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in connection with an earlier incident.As officers bundled him into a van, he offered his own verdict on the system that lost track of him: “Look at the justice of the U.K., they release people by mistake,” he said in a video aired by NBC News’ British partner Sky News.It’s a throwaway line, but it lands with an uncomfortable truth. In a country where little seems to function as it should — from the courts to the National Health Service to the trains — even the prisons can’t quite manage to keep the doors locked.Years of budget cuts are “catching up” with Britain’s public services, according to Glen O’Hara, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University.“The whole system of social care, for instance, is completely overwhelmed,” he told NBC News on Saturday, adding that Britain’s prisons had been swamped by a large number of short prison sentences.“It’s just overwhelming the system that can’t cope economically with all these numbers,” he said.Last summer, the men’s prison system was nearly filled to capacity with only a hundred or so empty places, a crisis that triggered the government’s emergency release scheme, allowing some inmates to leave after serving 40% of their sentence instead of the usual 50%. Introduced to ease overcrowding, the policy has since seen nearly 40,000 prisoners released early, Ministry of Justice figures show.Staffing issues have also plagued the services. In the year to June, nearly 13% of staff left British prisons, according to data from the Prison and Probation Service.Prison officers said a clerical error meant there was no warrant from the court to hold Kaddour-Cherif, and he was let go. William Smith, the convicted fraudster, was released as a result of a clerical error at the court level, the BBC reports.Wandsworth prison, where Smith and Kaddour-Cherif were released, was built in 1851 to house fewer than 1,000 prisoners. An August 2024 report by the prison’s independent monitoring board found inmate numbers had grown to 1,513.“Wings were chaotic and staff across most units were unable to confirm where all prisoners were during the working day,” the report said.The Victorian-era prison, one of many still in use dating back to the 1800s, has previously been the scene of high-profile escapes. Wandsworth made headlines in 2023 when former British soldier Daniel Khalife escaped by clinging to the underside of a lorry while awaiting trial for espionage and terrorism offenses.A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said that the recent cases “further expose the scale of the crisis in our prisons we inherited,” adding: “This will not be fixed overnight, but we are using every possible lever to bear down on these errors.”For all the headlines and investigations, the mistakes continue to pile up in a country struggling to hold itself together, one unlocked gate at a time.Freddie ClaytonFreddie Clayton is a freelance journalist based in London. 

- Latest News - November 8, 2025

LONDON — It’s been a strange sort of prison break: no daring escapes, no Hollywood getaways — just inmates quietly released, by mistake, onto the streets of Britain

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