The Federal Aviation Administration says flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility.
In theory, I guess, but that can only go wrong with a highly technical job like ATC.
There’s a lot of things they could try on paper. All of them result in disaster. Not necessarily even planes hitting each other. Just one hub airport coming to loggerjams on the runway would be enough to have repercussions on the entire US airport network.
Can you order them back to work and then not pay them?
We even have a word for this: slavery.
Which is illegal in the US, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.
And since they made it illegal for ATC to strike…
In theory, I guess, but that can only go wrong with a highly technical job like ATC.
There’s a lot of things they could try on paper. All of them result in disaster. Not necessarily even planes hitting each other. Just one hub airport coming to loggerjams on the runway would be enough to have repercussions on the entire US airport network.