Metro

Gov’t cuts sock fliers

Instead of resting up before her son’s London wedding festivities, a Buffalo woman was grounded by flight delays — all thanks to federal budget cuts.

On top of that, she had to fork out an extra $400 to rebook a flight she missed.

“It’s cost me a lot of money!” said Pauline Merritt, a 65-year-old retiree.

The delays — brought on by federal “sequester” cuts forcing furloughs of air-traffic controllers — began Wednesday.

They may be drawing down following a Senate vote last night to restore the workers’ full time.

But the bill, which still has to be approved by the House, was meaningless to Merritt on Wednesday, when she was supposed to take a JetBlue flight from Buffalo to JFK, then connect to London.

“I was in the plane, ready to push out, and they come on the intercom and said, ‘We are delayed until 8:45,’ ” she recalled, explaining how she missed her 7 p.m. connection to London.

“So I rebooked, at a cost of $400, for [yesterday] morning at 11:45 — which was also delayed an hour!”

Merritt was one of thousands of fliers across the map whose lives were put on hold due to a week of delays.

Some flights were delayed for more than two hours at Newark Airport yesterday, and flights at JFK were held up by as much as 31 minutes, the FAA said.

At La Guardia, the FAA claimed winds were causing delays of nearly an hour.

“They just don’t have the staffing to accept those kinds of departures, and that’s why the delays are there,” an air-traffic control source said. “So it’s all about the furlough, to our knowledge. Nothing to do with the winds.”

Travel agents in New York said the cuts were wreaking havoc with their clients.

“We’re finding that the sequester is affecting all flights across the board,” said Bill Sarcona, of Kintetsu, which books trips to Japan from JFK and Newark.

“Clients are calling us saying, ‘Why was my flight canceled?’ We’re trying to find answers that probably only our government can give.”

Additional reporting by Gerry Shields in DC and Kate Kowsh in NY