Two months ago the President and his Cabinet were doing their best Chicken Little impersonation, running around squawking about how the sky was falling thanks to the looming sequester. Massive across-the-board budget cuts were set to change life as we know it in the good ol’ United States. Planes would fall from the sky! Little old ladies would shrivel up and die from lack of prescription drugs! Children would drop dead in the street from starvation!

Come to think of it, these dire predictions sound a lot like business as usual on Capitol Hill. Why should we pay attention to them now? Bottom line – we shouldn’t. It’s two months past the March 1 kickoff of the sequester and life in America stumbles along pretty much the same as usual. Travelers find themselves waiting a little longer at airports, but unless you’re a fan of the red-eye flights that have been the most-targeted time period for staff cutbacks, there’s a whole lot of nothing going on.

Here are three reasons the sequester has had a less than impressive effect on the world of travel:

1. FAA workers have been furloughed only one day every two weeks. Does this sound like a wholesale closing of the air transportation industry? It doesn’t to us either. Much ado about almost nothing.

2. Rural control towers are now understaffed. You mean the General Aviation facilities with no scheduled commercial service, where you could take a nap on the runway for most of the day and be perfectly safe? Yeah those. Non-event in our book!

3. Better spacing in the sky. Lest we think that our government representatives are nothing more than a collection of knuckleheads, it kind of flew under the radar that there is a plan in place to keep jet airplanes from smashing into one another out there. During those times the tower has fewer controllers, due to the sequester, there is a plan in place to enforce a greater safety margin between aircraft in order to accommodate the reduced attention span of fewer employees.

Yep, believe it or not, government agencies are responding to the political reality of fiscal dunderheadedness as needed. As always, the dysfunctional politicians will do what they do and the rest of us will adapt. There’s nothing too exciting about that. Just business as usual in the land of the free and home of the brave. (Top image: Flickr | fakelvis)

The Jetsetter Show Team

Tags: air travel cutbacks, Jason Hartman, sequester, The Creating Wealth Show, tsa