• Experts warn that flight disruptions and cancellations are likely to extend through the Thanksgiving holiday travel period.
• Travelers are advised to consider their tolerance for uncertainty and create backup plans, as restoring normal flight operations will take time.

The Department of Transportation is still requiring airlines to reduce flight schedules by 10% at 40 major airports nationwide, even as the government shutdown winds down.

For now, major carriers say they will mostly cut service through their regional partners, meaning flights between large hubs and smaller cities and towns are most likely to be affected. However, the system has been discombobulated already, and the impact is likely to reach the Thanksgiving holiday.

"Typically, with a storm, one airline can recover operations within 48 to 72 hours after the weather event has finished ‒ but that’s when one hub is impacted," Tiffany Funk, co-founder and president of the travel-tech company point.me, said. "This is unprecedented, and it's also storm season. I don't think we'll see equal recovery. Airports will come online at different rates, which means airlines won't be equally impacted."

Airlines for America, the industry’s main trade group, warned that “more than 3.5 million passengers have experienced delays or cancellations because of air-traffic-control staffing concerns since the shutdown began,” calling the situation “not sustainable” with an all-time-high 31 million passengers expected between Nov. 21 and Dec. 1.

"The more cancellations go on, the worse the problem of restoring a schedule gets because you have more and more aircraft and more and more crew members out of position," Robert W. Mann Jr., a former airline executive officer and current president of R.W. Mann and Co., an independent airline consultancy, told USA TODAY "Hopefully, overnight you can fix that, but in some cases it might take a full day or more ‒ let’s say 36 hours ‒ to get a schedule back to normal because you have to get the equipment and the crew back in the right place."

Travel-booking data from Cirium also shows momentum slowing: Thanksgiving bookings were up 2.2% year-over-year at the end of October but had slipped to 0.96% growth by Nov. 7, suggesting travelers are growing wary of disruptions.

"You can't just flip a switch and reboot our national aviation infrastructure," Funk said. "We have aircraft that are out of place, crews that are out of place, pilots that are out of place … When you try to restart the system like that, it's not going to get better quickly. I would expect really bumpy operations and pretty brutal travel experiences, at least throughout the week."

Should I cancel my Thanksgiving flights?

Experts say that it depends on your tolerance for uncertainty and your flexibility.

“It’s going to be a challenging travel week for Thanksgiving,” Hayley Berg, lead economist at Hopper, said. “Thanksgiving and Christmas are the stickiest times of year. It’s trips home to see family … It’s going to be a bit of a pressure cooker, I think, the week of Thanksgiving.”

Still, she stressed that the cuts are a safety decision. "At the end of the day, this is a safety decision," she said. "If we're going to face disruptions because of a safety decision, I am significantly less frustrated than if this was just poor planning.”

Funk predicted Thanksgiving travel is "going to be stressful, and most people aren't prepared for that kind of stress baked into their travel. Nothing is likely to be on time, and you need to build that into your plans and your mindset."

"I think it's unlikely that this is tidy by Thanksgiving. It's such a busy travel period," she added. "Now is the time to think about your backup plans and your risk tolerance. Can you absorb a few nights in a hotel if you need to? Are you OK sleeping at an airport? People should determine their personal hassle tolerance."

For travelers still determined to fly, Funk recommended using reward points as a safety net. "If you have points, it’s a great option to use them to book a backup flight. You can almost always cancel award tickets with no penalty and get your points refunded. It’s a nice way to self-insure against some of this chaos."

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Is it still safe to travel with the controller shortage?

Transportation officials maintain that the cuts were designed with safety in mind. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said reducing flight volume protects both controllers and passengers by easing pressure on short-staffed facilities.

“This has really brought it all to a head where it’s now no longer possible for the U.S. airspace to handle the volume that it had been,” Berg said.

While it may feel chaotic, Michael Taylor, senior travel advisor at JD Power, said most of the blame rests with outdated FAA systems ‒ not unsafe operations.

"There's still going to have a problem that they've had ‒ a chronic shortage of air-traffic controllers ‒ and you can't just hire someone off the street and put them in the job the next day," Taylor said. "It takes a lot of time to train these people up. And then there's the other long-term problem … the FAA and air-traffic control not having up-to-date equipment. We’re still working with stuff that was invented for World War II."

How long will it take to get back to 'normal'? Is there a 'normal' anymore?

Even if lawmakers reach a deal to reopen the government, the ripple effects won't disappear overnight.

Flight crews and airlines remain committed to operating safely even when passengers get frustrated. "The attitude you've got to have is roll with it," Taylor said. "The airline wants to fly, and when they have a ground stop, there's nothing they can do about it. When that door closes, that plane is ready to take off. If you’re staying on the ground, it's because the FAA wants you to stay on the ground."

Staffing will remain an issue for a while, as well. "The idea that you can simply get more controllers who can actually talk to pilots and control traffic, simply by hiring people, is just not realistic. It’s not a fact," Mann added. "We still have significant understaffing, and the problem got significantly worse with the shutdown when many controllers who were already tired and overworked just decided that doing that ‒ and not getting paid ‒ was just not something for them."

Even with the shutdown resolved, the shortage of trained air-traffic controllers and the FAA’s aging infrastructure mean “normal” may still be months away ‒ if not longer.

"This is one conversation about how government impacts things at a human level," Funk added. "We're talking about inconvenience to travelers, but it's really about the impact of diminished infrastructure ‒ and that affects everyone."