Searching for the reason of the "Shortage of air traffic controllers" led to<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2023/06/26/faa-lacks-a-plan-for-air-traffic-control-shortage-per-government-report/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2023/06/26...</a><p>which contained this quote:<p>---8<---<p>Industry insiders argue that many of the FAA’s challenges stem from Congress’s long-term failure to adequately fund the agency. The current shortage of air traffic controllers can be traced back to the 2013 United States budget sequestration, says Paul Rinaldi, a former 16-year air traffic controller at Washington Dulles International Airport and 12-year president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). “They closed the air traffic control academy,” he explains. “They looked at reducing hours and many air traffic facilities. They looked at closing and cutting more than 100 federal contract towers, and stopped most modernization projects.”<p>---8<---<p>Which led me to this chain of events:<p>The budget sequestration ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_budget_sequestration" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_budget_sequ...</a> ), which was a set of automatic spending cuts in the Budget Control Act of 2011 ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011</a> ), which was implemented to end the 2011 US debt-ceiling crisis ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_States_debt-ceiling_crisis" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_States_debt-ceilin...</a> ), which was the newly republican House of Representatives starting their now recurring series of chicken-races about the debt ceiling, which had risen exceptionally fast due to the US stuffing all the private sector debt on their balance sheet during the handling of the 2008 financial crisis.