by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 8:00 AM ET, Sat November 8, 2025
UPDATED: 8 a.m. EST on November 8, 2025.
Approximately 807 flights within, into or out of the U.S. have been canceled for Saturday, November 8 as of 8 a.m. ET, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.com.
Meanwhile, nearly 1,100 Saturday flights have already been delayed as a result of the FAA's flight cuts amid the ongoing government shutdown.
This comes one day after more than 1,000 flights were canceled and another 6,691 delayed on Friday, the first day the FAA's cutbacks took effect.
There are already 797 flights canceled for Sunday, November 9.
UPDATED: 2:35 p.m. EST on November 7, 2025.
Nearly nine hundred flights have been canceled this Friday, November 7, as the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) unprecedented flight reduction plan begins.
The plan is to reduce flights by four percent today across the 40 airports. That number will increase across the next week, to six percent cancellations on November 11, eight percent by November 13 and, after a week of reductions, to 10 percent on November 14.
The plan, announced earlier this week, could cancel around 1,800 domestic flights a day across 40 high-traffic airports, such as New York’s JFK and Chicago’s O’Hare, though some estimates, such as BBC News’s, suggest the daily cancellation rates could be as high as 3,500 or 4,000.
Today, FlightAware is reporting 874 cancellations within the United States and 3,110 delays. The airports listed in the flight reduction plan are largely showing three to four percent cancellation rates for both departures and arrivals, though international flights will not be targeted in the cancellations. Nearly 700 flights schedule for tomorrow have already been cancelled.
Speaking at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport today, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that flights could be cut by as much as fifteen to twenty percent in the coming days, a large escalation from the original ten percent.
Airlines have been quick to provide information to their customers, and to support them: Delta and United, for example, are both offering an extraordinary measure: full refunds, including for non-refundable flights, for all travelers—not just the ones impacted by the reduction plan.
The flight reduction plan was put in place to protect the American airspace as overburdened and unpaid air traffic controllers—who were already understaffed before the government shutdown—choose to take time off or sick leave to go work elsewhere to make ends meet for them and their families.
"Air traffic controllers are texting, 'I don't even have enough money to put gas in my car to come to work,'" said Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in an interview with CNN. "We base what we do day in and day out on predictability," he said. "Right now there is no predictability."
According to the U.S. Travel Association, the travel industry has lost $5.2 billion in revenue and counting since the government shutdown began. There are fears that the flight reductions will discourage travelers from taking planned trips and cool the domestic market.
As we enter into what is typically a record-breaking holiday travel season, there are also concerns about long TSA lines, large numbers of cancellations and an increase in travelers overburdening an already struggling system.
It is now the longest government shutdown in American history.
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