Controllers, techs with perfect shutdown attendance getting $10,000 bonuses — no battery travel scale
What FAA Bonuses Mean for Flyers and Travel Gear The radios never quite go silent in a tower. Dawn just softens their crackle. You can almost smell the coffee that’s been microwaved one too many times. Headsets squeak. Fingers drum on consoles. A controller steadies her voice, guiding a jet through a crosswind that doesn’t care what Washington is doing. During the shutdown, paychecks slipped like delayed flights—later, later, maybe next week. Still, most of them showed up. They made split-second calls that kept aluminum, fuel, and human hopes separated by mere seconds and hundreds of feet. In the dark hours, a tech replaced a balky antenna with a borrowed wrench. A supervisor wrote another schedule with too many blanks. Someone’s kid texted about grocery money. Someone else quietly sold a guitar.