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The 'friendly skies': Canadian air controllers send unpaid US colleagues some pizza love

January 16, 2019

Pizza is keeping the friendly skies not only friendly, but maybe even safer, thanks to some real pizza love demonstrated this National Pizza Week by Canadian air traffic controllers for their stressed-out, unpaid-due-to-the-government-shutdown U.S. counterparts. Earlier this week, the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association tweeted that it had sent hundreds of pies to U.S. controllers. 

According to the Associated Press, Canadian controllers in Edmonton starting taking up a collection to send pies to their Anchorage, Alaska colleagues last week, which other Canadian controllers caught wind of and wanted to do as well. 

"The next thing we knew, our members were buying pizzas left, right and center for the colleagues in the U.S," Canadian Air Traffic Control Association President Peter Duffey told AP. 

U.S. controllers were touched and thankful for the generosity and sentiment as the U.S. government shutdown enters it s 26th day. Last week, 800,000 federal workers failed to get a paycheck for the first time since the shutdown forced essential government employees to go to work without pay. AP said that its estimates show that roughly 10,000 air traffic controllers are among those unfortunate individuals who are paying dearly for the standoff between President Trump and the U.S. congress.