I am an air traffic controller for the New York metro area. I’ll put it simply - air travel is UNSAFE right now.

We are working short staffed and overworked every single day, and this shutdown is only making things worse. The stress of not knowing when we will be able to pay rent, mortgage, loans, etc is overwhelming.

The other night, I had a string of Newark arrivals that had to be halted due to drone activity on final. After spinning in circles for 20+ minutes, they began requesting diversions to nearby airports because they were running close to minimum fuel. My workload increased dramatically and I looked around for help. We were severely short staffed on this shift and had no one in charge, no supervision. Nobody in the area was available to help. I dialed a phone line to the building operations manager to ask for help and inform them of the diversions and no one answered. I called three times, and every call went unanswered and ignored. I was left on my own to sort through the mess with less than a year experience working by myself.

This shutdown needs to end. We desperately need to get paid so we can settle our minds and get the operation back up to speed.