Canadian air traffic controllers are carrying out a simple but heartfelt gesture for their American counterparts — they’re buying them dinner during the U.S. government shutdown. Air traffic controllers in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, and Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, sent pizza down the coast to controllers manning the stations at the New York Air Traffic Control Center on Ronkonkoma, Long Island, New York, on Friday night in support of their colleagues who are working unpaid as the American government’s partial shutdown drags into its fourth week.
… That Air Traffic Control Center on Long Island is a radar facility that handles a large chunk of domestic and international air traffic. Part of the center’s airspace lies up against Canadian airspace, so in other words, these controllers ‘hand off’ aircraft to one another, and work together to keep airplanes safe.