Be careful connecting flight delays and federal budget*

No doubt there is some sort of connection, but flights get delayed for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with Washington's sequestration business. Take the weather: For the last day or two, there have been high winds in the NY area and storms in Florida and Colorado. That sort of thing also forces delays and cancellations. Actually, the FAA says that only 1,200 of the 2,600 delays on Monday were due to staff furloughs involving air traffic controllers. That's out of 30,000 to 35,000 commercial flights in the U.S. each day. Other tallies show more delays, though nobody who follows this stuff closely says that the numbers are off the charts. But this is springtime, when thunderstorms start popping up in the east and Midwest - and that, combined with the continued furloughs, are bound to cause more delays. During the first two months of the year, according to the government's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, flights had an 80 percent on-time record, a striking improvement from the 70 percent level in all of 2008. Still, that's down from nearly 85 percent in 2012.

*Update: From the WSJ:

U.S. budget-cut-induced furloughs led to staff shortages Wednesday at facilities in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Tampa, said the Federal Aviation Administration, with more than half of the delays endured by travelers on Tuesday attributed to a lack of controllers forcing planes to fly further apart. The agency, which has been criticized by airlines and lawmakers for how it implemented the staff cuts, said labor shortages contributed to delays Wednesday being concentrated at Chicago O'Hare, Las Vegas and Tampa. The rolling furloughs had been most acute on Tuesday at facilities in Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas and Dallas-Ft. Worth, and the agency came under fire for not giving airlines more advance warning about its staffing plans.