After months of inside-the-Beltway drama, the impact of sequestration cutbacks moved to center stage America on Monday as the aviation system was slowed by the furlough of 1,500 air traffic controllers. 
 
 With about 10 percent of the controllers who direct 23,000 planes a day scheduled to be off daily until October, both industry and government officials forecast that the effect would snowball as the nation enters peak travel season. 
 
 Short on staff and besieged by brisk winds at the three big New York area airports, controllers fell behind by mid-morning Monday and never caught up. The Newark, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports reported delays of one to three hours. 
 
 Most flights from the major Washington area airports ran close to on time, but some headed to New York faced long delays on the ground. 
 
 When New York’s three mega-airports fall behind schedule, that often has a ripple effect as far as the West Coast. By mid-afternoon Monday, flights into the US Airways hub in Charlotte were late in arriving; by evening, airports in Miami and Los Angeles reported lengthy delays because of controller shortages. Meanwhile, an ice storm at Denver’s airport further gummed up the system. 
 
 View Graphic How sequestration will impact federal departments 
 
 As TV crews panned across anxious and angry passengers in New York terminals, the debate revived in Washington over whether the controller furloughs announced last week were necessary or a White House ploy to dramatize the effects of sequestration. 
 
 “Our aviation system should not be used as a pawn in budget debate,” said Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association. “The livelihood of our economy is dependent on air commerce, and the financial strength of our airlines and the people they employ are at risk.” 
 
 He predicted that delays would spread in the weeks ahead if the Federal Aviation Administration presses on with a plan to recoup $200 million of the $637 million it must cut to meet sequestration goals this fiscal year. 
 
 After the furlough plan was presented last week, House Republicans insisted that FAA cuts should be made elsewhere and the airlines went to court in an attempt to block them. The Obama administration brushed off suggestions that air travel had become “a political football,” but crowds of delayed passengers undoubtedly made better television than announcements that federal office workers would have to take unpaid days off. 
 
 The FAA has estimated that a third of passengers will face delays during the furloughs, with up to 6,700 flights arriving late at more than a dozen major airports each day. On the worst travel day of 2012, when severe weather crippled the system, about 3,000 flights were delayed. 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D.-Nev.) predicted that fliers would face lengthy waits at virtually every airport. 
 
 The longest delays were expected at major hubs, including the three that serve New York, two in Chicago and those in Atlanta; Charlotte; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Los Angeles; Miami; Philadelphia; San Diego and San Francisco. 
 
 “In airports across the country, millions of Americans will get their first taste of the pain of sequestration,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “But many Americans have been feeling that pain for weeks. We cannot and we should not only address the FAA cuts. We cannot ignore the sequester’s overall effect on Americans.” 
 
 Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House aviation subcommittee, defended the FAA furloughs as necessary but said the issue needs resolution. 
 
 “There’s a lot finger-pointing going on, but the simple truth is that it is Congress’s job to fix this,” Larsen said. “Flight delays are just the latest example of how the sequester is damaging the economy and hurting families across the country.” 
 
 But as the first effects of the controller furloughs began to be seen, some Democrats broke ranks to say that Congress should find money elsewhere to reverse the cuts. 
 
 “Simply put, we cannot allow these furloughs to go through, because if they go through, it will make flying on a normal day seem like you’re flying in blizzard weather,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said at a Sunday news conference. 
 
 Greg Principato, president of a group that represents U.S. airports, said the cuts would “create a ripple effect throughout our highly interconnected system, affecting travelers at both large and small airports. We believe that these delays will get significantly worse as we move into peak summer travel season.” 
 
 Passengers faced another sequestration frustration as furloughs of Transportation Security Administration workers caused peak-hour backups at security checkpoints, and passengers on international flights arriving at Dulles International Airport faced 30-minute delays clearing short-staffed customs stations. 
 
 “We’re basically telling them to plan on a little bit of extra time to clear security,” said Chris Paolino, spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. “In terms of the FAA [furloughs], it’s almost like a weather situation, where we’re advising people to check with their airlines in case there are delays.” 
 
 At noon Monday, the lines at TSA checkpoints at Reagan National Airport were long, but travelers and officials said that was normal at peak hours. 
 
 For the most part, travelers said they had not experienced big delays. 
 
 Juliana Mejia, who has relatives in the D.C. area, was heading home to Madrid and said she arrived earlier than usual to catch her flight to New York before her connecting flight to Spain. 
 
 “If it indeed turns out as bad as it has been described, I just hope it’s not today,” she said. “I have yet to see the long lines. So far, everything looks pretty smooth.” 
 
 Arriving from Dallas, D.C. resident Orion Vanhart said he almost missed his flight because of delays getting to the gate. He said he noticed longer-than-usual lines at the checkpoints coming in. 
 
 “I am here now so I can’t be mad,” Vanhart said. “I was just a little frustrated back in Dallas.” 
 
 A few flights at National were behind schedule. 
 
 Marcie Hickman, 43, a business traveler who shuttles between offices in North Carolina and Washington, said her flight from Raleigh was delayed for almost an hour Monday morning. 
 
 “To me less than an hour is not a big deal,” she said, hurrying to claim her luggage. “Just a little delay, nothing bad.” 
 
 Betty Kirkland, 54, was headed home to Atlanta on Monday afternoon. Her 1 p.m. flight was delayed by 30 minutes because of announced “air traffic” delays. 
 
 “We knew there was going to be some issues, and we were pretty lucky it was only 30 minutes,” she said. “It wasn’t too bad, can’t complain.” ||||| Despite a dire description from DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, delayed flights and air traveler headaches aren’t here quite yet, but travelers could be in for a rude April Fools’ Day present. 
 
 Napolitano told a POLITICO Playbook breakfast Monday morning that lines at some airports are already “150 to 200 percent as long as we would normally expect,” although TSA said travelers were not yet feeling the impact. 
 
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 reset Napolitano: Sending out furlough notices 
 
 “We are already seeing the effects of the ports of entry, the big airports for example. Some of them had very long lines this weekend,” she said. “Look people, I don’t mean to scare, I mean to inform. If you’re traveling, get to the airport earlier than you otherwise would. There’s only so much we can do with personnel and please don't yell at the customs officers, the TSA officers. They aren’t responsible for sequester.” 
 
 But first-person accounts of long security lines have yet to flood the Internet — and statements from TSA and Customs and Border Patrol suggested Napolitano may have been referring to customs checks for international travelers. 
 
 Washington failed to set a deal to avoid the sequester’s cuts to the country’s aviation backbone, but the fallout is probably 30 days away, just as fliers gear up for the busy Memorial Day and summer travel seasons. 
 
 “Travelers will likely not see immediate impacts at airport security checkpoints on March 1, but lines and wait times will increase as reductions to overtime and the inability to backfill positions for attrition occur,” a TSA spokesman said in a statement. 
 
 That’s good news for travelers bracing for the snow storm expected to sock the East Coast midweek — dubbed the “snowquester.” But air traffic controllers and frontline TSA screeners are still preparing for unpaid furlough days that are likely to shutter rural control towers and slow traffic at major airports during peak times. 
 
 A hiring freeze means up to 1,000 additional screener vacancies by the busy Memorial Day weekend and as many as 2,600 vacancies by the end of September, the TSA official said. That means that wait times “exceeding 30 to 40 minutes could double at nearly all of the largest airports.”
– Here we go: Those promised airport delays, the result of furloughs caused by the sequester, have arrived. All three major NYC-area airports saw flights falling behind schedule yesterday and, as the Washington Post puts it, air traffic controllers "never caught up," with delays clocking in at between one and three hours. Backups at those three airports have the unfortunate tendency to reverberate, and delays started hitting Miami, Los Angeles, and Charlotte in the latter part of the day. Why? Air traffic controllers—1,500 of them—went on furlough; TSA and customs furloughs also caused backups at some airports. About 10% of all air traffic controllers will be off each day until October, and the FAA predicts one-third of passengers will experience delays during that time. Here's some really awful context: Airlines for America reports that the FAA estimates delays could hit 6,700 flights a day; last year's worst travel day saw 3,000 flights delayed due to weather.