LOS ANGELES — Travelers got their first taste of what is expected to be worsening cuts in commercial air traffic due to the government shutdown, bringing delays, anxiety and confusion to airports across the nation.

By some measures, the level of chaos was less than some feared, but government officials warned that flight cancellations are set to increase over the next few days.

According to an emergency order released by the Trump administration, airlines had to cut flights by 4% on Friday and then ramp up to 6% by Tuesday, 8% by Thursday and 10% by Nov. 14. The administration said that number could rise to 20% if the shutdown continues.

Lauren Chavez had scrolled through horror story after horror story on TikTok about the government shutdown leading to long delays and cancellations at U.S. airports, with people camping out in terminals for hours.

Out of an abundance of caution, the 28-year-old had arrived at Los Angeles International Airport — her fiance and 4-year-old daughter in tow — six hours early for their 3:55 p.m. Southwest flight back home to Albuquerque.

But all was relatively quiet Friday as she sat cross-legged in bustling Terminal 1 after a few days at Disneyland and California Adventure.

Besides a few flights delayed by 30 minutes to an hour, most appeared to be running on schedule.

“We anticipated long TSA lines,” Chavez said as her daughter clambered into her lap, watching a video on her mom’s phone, as people checked in for flights around them.

Since the government announced this week it would be requiring airlines to reduce the number of flights to minimize risk during the government shutdown, travelers have been bracing for significant disruptions.

But the flight reductions Friday amounted to only a fraction of the total flights at the nation’s biggest airports. They are expected to climb over the next few days, however, as the Federal Aviation Administration scales back additional air travel to take pressure off air traffic controllers, who have been working unpaid during the shutdown.

Already, airlines have canceled more than 1,000 flights across the country over the next few days, and on Friday a string of airports experienced significant delays.

One of the worst hit was Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where domestic flights were delayed Friday afternoon by an average of four hours, according to FlightAware. More than 50 flights scheduled for Friday were canceled in and out of Los Angeles International Airport, the flight tracking website said, and about 160 flights were delayed.

The FAA on Wednesday announced that it planned to cut air traffic by 10% at 40 airports nationwide as staffing shortages intensify as the government shutdown stretches into its second month.

Officials urged passengers to check with airlines on the status of their flights and warned that flights could be canceled with little notice.

The situation has left travelers angry and anxious. Some tried to move their travel plans up, hoping to avoid the worst of the fallout from the flight reductions, while others are trying to figure out alternatives in case their flights are canceled.

Early Friday morning, Ginger Campbell, 65, logged on to her phone to check her Southwest Airlines app for updates on her flight to Chicago that was scheduled for 5:30 a.m. Saturday.

Nothing had changed. Her flight out of LAX was still listed “on time.”

But Campbell, who is traveling to help her 81-year-old mother undergo dental surgery, still worried that her flight could be canceled before Saturday morning. And even if that journey went smoothly, the same might not be true for her return flight set for Nov. 15. Or her Thanksgiving plans.

“My whole family is going to Kansas City, so I don’t know if we’re going to be able to make that flight either if the shutdown continues,” Campbell said. “I just feel like this is an unnecessary pressure that we have put on us that we don’t need.”

Some have already canceled their travel plans.

On Thursday night, Beverly Gillette finally decided to cancel her Saturday morning flight to Brooklyn, New York, after reading reports of overworked air traffic controllers, unpaid TSA workers and staffing shortages. She worried LAX and JFK would be subject to “retaliatory measures from the government.”

Her trip to visit her daughter, who recently had a small surgery, wasn’t an emergency trip, she said. “It just felt like the smart thing to do, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

The recent cuts caused by the government shutdown are causing negative repercussions for so many people, Gillette said.

“As if we’re not angry enough about how things are operating in Washington at the moment,” Gillette said, “now we have to be sad because we can’t see our friends and family potentially.”

According to the aviation analytics company Cirium, about 3% of the 25,375 scheduled flights Friday were canceled.

“Cancellations are moderate,” Cirium said in a statement Friday. “Nowhere near cancellations for weather events or IT disruptions that have occurred since January 2024.”

Since the government shutdown Oct. 1, nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay, resulting in high levels of fatigue and stress among staff tasked with keeping the skies safe. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said the flight reductions were the result of concerns that staffing pressures could compromise safety.

“What we’re finding is that our air traffic controllers, because of the financial pressures at home, are taking side jobs. They need to put food on the table, gas in the car, pay their bills,” Duffy said.

The Department of Transportation has said the decision to impose cuts is prompted by the FAA’s review of aviation safety data: voluntary, confidential safety reports filed by pilots and air traffic controllers, they say, indicate growing pressure on the system, which increases safety risk.

“This isn’t about politics — it’s about assessing the data and alleviating building risk in the system as controllers continue to work without pay,” Duffy said in a statement. “It’s safe to fly today, and it will continue to be safe to fly next week because of the proactive actions we are taking.”

Pressed Friday about the impacts, Duffy told CBS: “If people want to question us, I would throw it back at them: Open up the government. We have to take unprecedented action because we are in an unprecedented situation with the shutdown.”

The decision to cut flights intensified the tension between Republicans and Democrats at the nation’s capital. Washington Rep. Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, questioned whether safety was the key motivation in the decision to cut flights, calling it an “unprecedented step that demands more transparency.”

The cuts could affect about 1,800 flights and 268,000 passengers in the U.S. a day, according to Cirium. About 72 flights a day could be cut at LAX, affecting 12,371 passengers. An additional 105 flights could be canceled at the four other California airports targeted for reductions, Cirium estimated.

It can be difficult for airlines to rebook passengers after cancellations because flights tend to fly now at or near full capacity, said Mark Hansen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

“One thing that they said they’re going to do, which makes sense, is they’re going to focus on ... what they call regional flights, which are operated from smaller airports and into larger airports, and typically involve smaller aircraft, so that the passengers being displaced are fewer,” Hansen said.

For travelers, uncertainty over whether their flights will be affected has left them in limbo.

There was no way Kathryn McMiller of Seal Beach was going to risk being stranded because of flight cancellations, so she opted to postpone her trip this month to visit her brother and sister-in-law in Orlando, Florida, until January.

It wasn’t so much getting there that she was concerned about, the 69-year-old said, but the potential that her trip home might be delayed because of the lingering shutdown.

She decided to cancel her Southwest flight Tuesday, days before the news of the looming flight reductions.

“I absolutely have to be back on Dec. 3, and I’m concerned this government shutdown is going to go really long,” McMiller said. “I could just imagine being stuck with all these people and having to try to track down a hotel. It’s not worth it.”

Leslie Nash of Long Beach waited as long as she could before calling off her 60th-birthday trip to Hawaii with her sisters; she was forced to cancel Thursday or risk losing refunds for her hotel room and rental car.

“It’s a total first-world problem on my end,” she said. “I can always reschedule, but it just sucks.”

Faced with the government shutdown, the immigration raids in Southern California, the general polarization of American politics and now the travel setbacks, “people are just fed up,” Nash said. “Can we have any joy?”

It may not have been joy, but some passengers arrived at the airport Friday relieved to find out their flights were still happening.

“We woke up this morning and thought, our flight could be canceled,” said Raven Popescu, 29, scrolling on his phone for updates at LAX.

So far, his flight to Nashville appeared unaffected.

“But it could still happen,” the audio engineer with rock/R&B band Rain City Drive mused as he watched over some 15 pieces of luggage and hulking utility cases housing the band’s instruments, sound equipment and cables.

Popescu, who was traveling from L.A. as the band did a one-off show in Nashville, was a little worried they might get stranded in the Music City.

Lisa James had worried that the government shutdown would cause chaos as she wrapped up a five-day cruise to the Caribbean.

“It’s annoying and scary,” the 45-year-old said as she and a group of friends sat on a bench in Terminal 1, surrounded by their matching pink hard-shell suitcases.

Her Southwest flight home to Chicago and her friends’ Sun Country flights to Minnesota had been delayed by about an hour.

The irony, she said, was that she didn’t even want to return home.

“If I had money to vacation all the time, I would,” she said. “But you gotta go home, make a living, take care of the kids, feed the dog.”

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(Los Angeles Times staff writer Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.)

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