Air traffic controllers resume operations a day after Hollywood Burbank Airport operated for hours without a staffed control tower due to staffing shortages amid the U.S. government shutdown, in Burbank, California, U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS/Daniel Cole

Air traffic controllers have been working without pay for 37 days, and more are having to deal with the stress of going without basic needs the longer the government shutdown drags on. For one controller, this includes potentially living on the street.

In a Friday interview with CNN host Erin Burnett, Dan McCabe — who is the Southern Regional Vice President of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association — said more air traffic controllers are in "desperate" economic situations, and feel increasingly "hopeless" and "mad" every day the shutdown continues.

"I got a call today that there is a controller, a fairly new controller that is now being evicted from their apartment. They got the notice that if they don't pay rent by Sunday, they're getting evicted. So, you know, that's great," McCabe said sarcastically. "You get to add that stress to everything. Now when they're on break, they get to think about, 'how am I going to pay to move? Where am I going to go? Am I going to be homeless?'"

McCabe reminded viewers that the work of an air traffic controller is "fatiguing," and that many controllers have "punishing" schedules in which they have to report to work six days out of the week for 10 hours a day.

"That's four days off a month for anyone counting. And that's not a lot of time to spend with your family or do things around the house," he said. "... I worry about them all the time, because they're dealing with things that they have nothing to do with. And like, we're talking about the person who's facing eviction: Are we really going to let this person take a hit on their credit, where they're going to have trouble getting a new place?"

"What have they done wrong? They've been to work," he continued. "They're doing what they they swore they would do as their first day as a federal employee — working on behalf of the United States of America, they're moving people and cargo globally. And this is what they're getting out of it ... there are no words for it."

McCabe went on to say that he "completely understand[s]" why Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the Federal Aviation Administration were cutting air traffic and delaying flights, saying safety should always take precedent over efficiency.

"We're reducing the efficiency to to account for the safety of it," he said. "And when you have people that are going to work and they're worried about things, basic human needs, you're injecting some risk into a system that at its foundation was built to be risk averse. I completely understand what they're doing."

Watch the segment below:

- YouTube www.youtube.com