Good news for travelers: Flight cancellations drop as the government reopens

• Air travel is set to finally improve as the federal government reopens after its longest shutdown.
• Flight cancellations and delays have improved after earlier mass disruptions at US airports.
• Experts say full recovery could take up to two weeks, just ahead of the Thanksgiving travel surge.

Maybe Thanksgiving travel won't be total chaos after all.

Flyers have been on a rollercoaster since the government shutdown on October 1, which has forced air traffic controllers to work without pay for 43 days.

Things began to further spiral last week, when government officials started cutting 10% of flights across 40 US airports to manage traffic.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by the mass cancellations, and experts warned the busy holiday season would further strain the airspace — but it appears the impacts are reducing as the shutdown finally ended on Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Friday that it would reduce the number of domestic flights that airlines across 40 major airports were required to cut, from 6% to 3%, starting November 15.

Data from the aviation analytics company Cirium shows there were about 830 cancellations on Wednesday, representing about 3.6% of scheduled flights. That is down from about 1,200 cancellations on Tuesday (5.2%), 2,240 on Monday (8.7%), and about 2,630 on Sunday (10.2%) — the worst day since the cuts began.

There were also zero staffing triggers — which the FAA uses to indicate a facility is understaffed — as of Thursday morning. There were 81 on Saturday, before the number slowly trickled down to 11 on Tuesday and just four on Wednesday, according to the Department of Transportation.

On-time performance is also on the rise.

About 90% of flights departed within 15 minutes of their scheduled time on Wednesday. It was 83% on Tuesday, which Cirium said is "above to above average." Those rates are also far better than the nearly 40% of flights that left late on Sunday and Monday.

Friday and Saturday were better, but still lagging, with 77% and 71% of flights leaving on time, respectively. Cirium said it expects cancellations to continue dropping.

What may have helped — beyond the controllers' commitment to show up despite two $0 paychecks — was the government's decision to bar private jets from flying into 12 major airports. This provided some breathing room in the US' busiest hubs.

With the government reopening and controllers once again working with pay, the strained travel system could return to a semblance of normality before the surge in Thanksgiving travel.

That's if airlines and airports can rebound quickly after the government reopens.

Airlines for America, a trade group for carriers like American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, said in a Monday statement that "there will be residual effects for days."

Aviation data website Flightaware shows that as of 10 a.m. on Thursday, about 1,000 flights within, into, or out of the US have been canceled. More than Wednesday but better overall.

Henry Harteveldt, president and aviation strategist at Atmosphere Research Group, told Business Insider that operations may take seven to 14 days to recover.

"This is not a rubber band, so it's not going to snap back," he said.

Delta told Business Insider that it looks forward to recovering operations. American said it is "well-positioned to recover quickly because of our operational decisions to minimize disruption."

Still, with Thanksgiving two weeks away, travelers might finally have a reason to hope the only disruptions they'll face are the regular crowds and weather.