“I just don’t want to be stranded at the airport sleeping on a bench,” Michele Cuthbert, of Columbus, Ohio, said about an upcoming flight to Dallas.

Forty major U.S. airports will experience a 10% reduction in flights due to the federal government shutdown.

Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, said on Friday that the mandate could reach as high as 20 percent at some airports if the shutdown continued to push air traffic controllers to look for o...