Has the record-long government shutdown over President Donald Trump’s border wall demand finally reached a “tipping point”?

Many answered in the affirmative on Friday after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted flights into New York’s LaGuardia Airport due a shortage of air traffic controllers, who are among the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have now missed their second paycheck as the partial shutdown heads into its fifth week.

“We’ve finally hit a pain point in the government shutdown that will bring about either legislation to end the shutdown or a crisis that impacts far more than the federal employees who have so far borne the brunt of the shutdown.”
—Conor Sen, Bloomberg

In addition to the LaGuardia stoppage—which was eventually lifted—major airports in Philadelphia and Newark also reported significant delays because of staff shortages.

As Vox‘s Dara Lind noted, “It’s the first time the partial government shutdown, which has now lasted five weeks, has affected air traffic, although some airports have had to briefly reduce the number of security checkpoints due to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel shortages.”

Bloomberg‘s Conor Sen argued that the flight stoppage and delays shows that “we’ve finally hit a pain point in the government shutdown that will bring about either legislation to end the shutdown or a crisis that impacts far more than the federal employees who have so far borne the brunt of the shutdown.”

Democratic lawmakers were quick to seize upon the flight disarray as yet another urgent reason that the government shutdown must end immediately.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the delays “horrendous” and said Trump “must give up his racist wall and Republicans in Congress must vote now to end this shutdown.”