Tell Grandma you might not make it after all. More than 15,000 Federal Aviation Administration employees have been furloughed due to the government shutdown, 3,000 of which are responsible for ensuring planes don't come apart mid-air.
The air safety inspectors are responsible for checking on the mechanical integrity of the planes and any work that's been done, and perform inspections on both the planes and their pilots.
According to the Daily Mail, when the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union got word of the furloughs, they thought the FAA had made a mistake.
Mike Perrone, the union's president, told the Mail that he's "outraged that the FAA would consider aviation safety inspectors as playing anything but a pivotal role in protecting the safety of the American public."
The FAA's workforce totals over 46,000 employees, one-third of which have been furloughed during the U.S. government shutdown. The agency contends that it's business as usual, with air traffic controllers and security screeners unaffected by the shutdown. But if flights begin getting canceled due to a lack of inspectors, Congress could do what it did last time and pass a temporary fix to bring the inspectors back on board.
