No sky perks for you!

Delta Air Lines suspended its airport escorts and red coat services for members of Congress and their staff because of the ongoing partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, the air carrier said Tuesday.

The move comes a week after Delta CEO Ed Bastian blasted Congress during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” for failing to authorize pay for Transportation Security Administration agents during the shutdown of the agency that includes TSA.

“Due to the impact on resources from the longstanding government shutdown, Delta will temporarily suspend specialty services to members of Congress flying Delta,” Delta said in a statement to CNBC.

“Next to safety, Delta’s No. 1 priority is taking care of our people and customers, which has become increasingly difficult in the current environment,” the airline said.

Delta’s action was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Delta’s Capital Desk, which is a reservation line for members of Congress and staffers, remains open.

But for now, those customers will be treated like any other passengers based on their respective Sky Miles status.

The move comes as airports around the U.S., including major hubs in cities such as Atlanta, where Delta is based, are seeing extra-long security lines as a result of elevated absences by TSA agents, who are set to miss their second full paycheck this week.

Bastian last week fumed to CNBC that it is “inexcusable that our security agents, our frontline agents, that are essential to what we do, are not being paid. And it’s ridiculous to see them being used as political chips.

“So, we’re outraged,” Bastian said.

“And if there’s a call to action here — and I think over 90% of the American public supports those people getting paid — ask our folks right here in Washington to do their job, get our people paid. They can do it,” the CEO said.

United Airlines, when asked by CNBC if it had suspended its similar perks for members of Congress, said, “We don’t have any changes to announce today.”

CNBC has requested comment from American Airlines about its services for federal lawmakers.

Airline executives have railed against lawmakers in recent months, urging them to ensure that essential government workers like TSA officers are paid during shutdowns, which have become increasingly common.

Repeated funding impasses, including in early 2019 and as recently as last fall, ended shortly after absences of government workers who were required to work without pay increased.

President Donald Trump’s renewed focus on housing affordability has found a clear villain: institutional investors that own large swaths of single-family homes in fast-growing Sun Belt cities, where would-be homeowners increasingly find themselves bidding against Wall Street.

Trump argued in a social media post Wednesday that corporate ownership has helped push housing further out of reach for everyday Americans, saying he’s immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes.

The message may be aimed at places like Atlanta and Jacksonville, metropolitan areas where investor ownership is far higher than the national average.

While institutional investors only own roughly 2% of the nation’s single-family rental housing stock, their presence is far more concentrated in parts of the Southeast. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates, for example, that investors control about a quarter of Atlanta’s single-family rental market, more than a fifth of Jacksonville’s and sizable shares in Charlotte and Tampa.

Those concentrations trace back to the aftermath of the financial crisis, when large investors moved aggressively into housing markets flooded with foreclosures. By buying homes in bulk, they helped stabilize prices in hard-hit regions experiencing sharp declines, particularly across the Sun Belt, according to Wolfe Research.

“While their overall footprint is limited, ownership is heavily concentrated in Sun Belt cities, likely reflecting expectations of stronger home price appreciation,” analysts at Wolfe said in a recent note to clients.

The idea of curbing Wall Street’s role in housing isn’t new. Analysts at BTIG note that Congress has seen multiple efforts in recent years to rein in institutional homeownership, ranging from tighter regulations and financing limits to outright ownership bans and even forced liquidations.

“Bureaucratic limitations have historically hindered the legislation in Congress, and as it stands now most bills remain in the ‘Introduced’ phase,” BTIG said in a note.

Trump did not provide details on how such a ban would be implemented. The president said he plans to outline additional housing and affordability proposals in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in two weeks.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.

U.S. airlines started canceling hundreds of flights on Friday, hours after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the cuts amid the more-than-monthlong government shutdown.

The reductions were ordered as air traffic controllers have missed their paychecks due to the government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history. Air traffic control staffing shortages have been disrupting flights at several major U.S. airports, vexing travelers and airline executives alike.

Air traffic controller shortages were delaying flights at several major U.S. airports on Friday, including Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, San Francisco International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.

The sudden flight cuts this week forced airlines to scramble with schedule adjustments and making sure crews are where they need to be despite the last-minute changes.

Roughly 780 U.S. flights were canceled as of 2 p.m. ET Friday, according to aviation data firm Cirium, about 3% of the total schedule for the day. That scale of disruption is fairly common for routine disruptions like major thunderstorms, but the Department of Transportation warned that cancellations could ramp up.

According to the FAA’s order, the flight cuts will increase to 10% over the next week, beginning with 4% on Friday, 6% by Tuesday, 8% by Thursday and finally 10% on Nov. 14.

Friday’s cancellation levels were the 72nd worst for the U.S. flights market since Jan. 1, 2024, according to Cirium. That period also included a Southwest Airlines Christmas meltdown after severe weather and mass delays at Delta Air Lines last summer in the wake of a CrowdStrike tech outage.

While the FAA required airlines to make cuts, the general aviation sector, which includes private jets, was not required to make similarly broad cuts. The order, however, said that staffing shortages could affect general aviation and that those private flights could face up to 10% cuts at airports that the agency designated “high-impact,” including New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport and Texas’ William P. Hobby Airport in Houston and Dallas Love Field.

The FAA didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for the National Business Aviation Association said the industry is also affected by air traffic staffing shortages and reduced capacity, and that airports could deny some airplanes the ability to land there.

NBAA’s president and CEO Ed Bolen said that “our sector will continue to pursue mandatory and voluntary means to ensure we are part of the solution to the challenges posed in the current environment.”

The financial impact of the latest disruptions isn’t immediately clear. The cancellations could help lift airlines’ unit revenue with customers competing for fewer seats, “but we also believe the prolonged shutdown and widespread cancelations will impact booking demand in the near term,” Scott Group, an airline analyst at Wolfe Research, wrote in a note Friday.

The cuts come during a generally low-demand period for travel ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, but it still sent many travelers searching for alternatives. Rental car company Hertz said that reservations over the past two days for one-way rentals spiked more than 20% from the same period last year.

Major network airlines said the disruptions were largely centered on regional flights that fly to smaller cities. United Airlines, for example, said its hub-to-hub flying and its long-haul international flights wouldn’t be canceled because of the order.

American Airlines, for its part, said it was limiting disruptions to customers by avoiding cuts to routes it only flies once or twice a day. Instead, the airline is trimming a few flights a day from high-frequency markets – like reducing daily departures between its hub at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport to Northwest Arkansas National Airport from 10 to eight, and Boston Logan International to Ronald Reagan Washington National from 10 to nine.

The carrier canceled 221 flights on Friday, according to CEO Robert Isom, who said the airline is “frustrated” with the reduction.

Isom said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the airline is working to ensure flights to all destinations still remain in place, but that the frequency of those flight paths is decreasing.

“What we’ve done today is we tried to minimize the impact on all of our customers — there’s only 220 flights out of 6,200 flights, and we’ve done it in a way that really impacts our smaller aircraft,” Isom said. “This level of cancellation is going to grow over time, and that’s something that is going to be problematic.”

Uber announced Friday it is expanding its partnership with Alphabet’s Waymo to offer robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta beginning in early 2025. Shares of Uber jumped 5% on the news while Alphabet rose about 1%.

Uber riders in those cities can be matched with a driverless Waymo car for some trips, according to the companies. The rides will only be available through Uber’s app, unlike in San Francisco and Los Angeles where riders book through the Waymo app. A Waymo spokesperson said it had no plans to partner with Uber in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The expansion comes as Uber faces investor pressure to step up its autonomous vehicle strategy, especially ahead of Tesla‘s planned robotaxi event slated for Oct. 10. Shares of Uber have fallen 9% since the Tesla event was announced and are off 17% from their 52-week highs. 

It may also slow Waymo encroachment into Uber’s market share. An analysis from Bernstein estimated that, as of May 2024, Waymo’s 50,000 weekly paid rides made up approximately 2% of ride-sharing usage in San Francisco. Since then, Waymo has doubled its paid robotaxi trips to 100,000 a week, the company announced. 

“We’re thrilled to build on our successful partnership with Waymo, which has already powered fully autonomous trips for tens of thousands of riders in Phoenix,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a release. 

Uber’s initial agreement with Waymo in Phoenix also included autonomous Uber Eats deliveries in the city. The expansion into Austin and Atlanta won’t include Uber Eats at first, according to the Waymo spokesperson, but they’re exploring that possibility for the future. 

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said, “We’ve been delighted at the positive feedback from our Waymo One riders to date, and we can’t wait to bring the comfort, convenience, and safety of the Waymo Driver to these cities in partnership with Uber.” 

The expansion into two more cities is another step in Uber’s advancement into the robotaxi space, after struggling to get a foothold and selling off its own self-driving division in 2020, now relying on partnerships with companies including Waymo, GM‘s Cruise and the SoftBank-backed U.K. startup Wayve to gain ground. 

Uber shares dipped in August after the company announced a multiyear partnership with Cruise to offer autonomous rides through its app next year. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski cited Cruise’s previous safety challenges as a part of the investor skepticism, along with now-fulfilled hopes for a partnership with Waymo instead. 

Waymo has rapidly made strides in the self-driving race. It currently offers robotaxi services to the public in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. It has logged more than 22 million miles through June of this year, and last week, it released a report that argued its vehicles are safer than human drivers. It began testing driverless cars on Bay Area freeways with Google employees in August.

Some analysts were more hopeful for a potential Uber and Waymo expansion into San Francisco. But Atlanta and Austin, where Waymo has already begun testing, may still help sentiment. 

— CNBC’s Laura Batchelor and Lora Kolodny contributed to this article.