Derived from the multiple flight cancellations at several airports in the United States, the Donald Trump government has announced a series of measures to mitigate the situation.
Through a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, in English), the reduction of flights was announced on April 16 at Chicago O’Hare International Airportone of the largest in the United States.
The reasons are because, according to the FAA, last summer Less than 60% of arrivals and departures from said airport were on time.
The measure was called by the authorities as “scheduling reduction,” which consists of limiting daily operations to 2,708, and thus “avoid a drastic increase compared to last summer’s daily programming”.
The FAA details that the Chicago airport is one of the busiest in the United States, where approximately “more than 3,080 flights planned on the busiest days of the summer of 2026.”
“This represents an increase in 14.9% on the busiest days compared to the summer of 2025”notes the FAA.
Among the problems that US authorities found at the Chicago airport and elsewhere were “the unrealistic schedules that far exceeded the capacity of the airport”.
This measure will come into force from May 17 to October 24, 2026. “The FAA order distributes operations among airlines based on their approved schedules for the summer of 2025”say the authorities.
US authorities did not provide further details on whether this measure will be implemented at other airports, but They did indicate that it has been successful at Newark Liberty International Airport.
On April 13, US authorities, as well as the flight tracker Flightware, indicated that a total of 12,618 flights were delayed and 1,397 were canceled worldwide.
CNN noted that two factors that caused delays at US airports were weather conditions and the removal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from many precincts.