The FAA is limiting flights at big airports. But passengers at small airports will feel the most pain

By Chris Isidore, CNN

(CNN) — The federal government is ordering flight cuts at 40 major airports because of the shutdown – but it’s flyers in places like Pensacola, Florida; Moline, Illinois; Waco, Texas; and Shreveport, Louisiana who will have it the hardest.

That’s because small feeder flights are largely the ones getting canceled, not the flights between major cities.

Canceling flights at the smaller airports can cause significant problems for those who depend on them, but it limits the disruption for the system overall. That allows the airlines to comply with the new Federal Aviation Administration limits.

For example, Miami International Airport is one of the airports where the FAA limits went into effect Friday. Pensacola International Airport, a small regional airport nearly 700 miles away on the Florida panhandle, definitely is not.

But some Pensacola flights were among those affected anyway.

All eight flights normally scheduled between Miami and Pensacola by American Airlines on Friday had been canceled. Pensacola travelers needing to get to Miami had a couple of unappealing choices – drive the 700 miles or fly in the wrong direction to Atlanta, Charlotte or Dallas and then fly to Miami.

Flight tracker FlightAware showed the US airports with the greatest percentage of canceled flights Friday were all small ones – Quad Cities International Airport in Moline, Illinois on the Mississippi River had 9% of its outbound flights canceled. Shreveport Regional in Louisiana had 7%. Northwest Arkansas National was one of a number of airports at a 6% cancellation rate. All were well above the overall 3% of domestic flights nationwide that had been grounded, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Meanwhle Cirium shows only one of 46 flights from Los Angeles International Airport to a New York airport being canceled.

“No one likes to see a flight canceled,” Todd Payne, assistant director at the Pensacola airport, told CNN. “We realize the issues being dealt with on a national air systems basis. We’re fortunate we have no local issues with the folks in our (control) tower.”

Six of 45 scheduled outbound flights at Pensacola had been canceled so far on Friday, for 13%, Payne said that morning.

Short hops common among connecting passengers also got canceled. United canceled eight of 24 flights between Colorado Springs and Denver which is only about 100 miles away. American canceled four of six flights between its Dallas-Fort Worth hub and Waco, also just over 100 miles away. While 100 miles is a more drivable distance than Pensacola to Miami, it can present its own challenges for travelers.

The FAA said it is trying to limit problems at smaller airports.

If airlines can’t minimize those impacts, the agency said in a statement, “the FAA may direct cancellations on a more prescriptive basis.”

But as much as the smaller airports might be bearing a greater brunt of the cancellations, neither the FAA nor the airlines are going to choke off the flow of passengers between major cities, said Zach Griff, an aviation expert.

“Hub to hub flights, are they incredibly important,” he said. “They have a lot more downstream effect than canceling some of the smaller feeder flights, both for passengers and the crews. If you cancel those (mainline) flights you can quickly put crews out of place.”

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