The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is looking for answers about weeks of severe delays and cancellations at Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR).
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Monday requested an audit of the FAA’s handling of Newark’s busy airspace, through which more than 24 million passengers flew in 2024, per FAA data. The disruptions are due to a combination of staffing shortages, runway construction, and equipment issues that twice rendered controllers unable to receive communications and radar data for about 90 seconds.
Construction on one of Newark’s three main runways wrapped up ahead of schedule in June, allowing the airport to increase its rate of arrivals and departures from 28 to 34. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said that is about four operations shy of the airport’s theoretical capacity.
Further airport construction, though, will limit arrivals and departures to 28 per hour on weekends from September through the end of the year, the FAA said in June.
Disruptions have persisted. Due to air traffic control (ATC) staffing shortages, Newark experienced 1,270 delays and more than 250 cancellations on Monday and this past weekend, per FlightAware.
Recent equipment outages have also caused disruptions at the Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) feeding data to Denver International Airport (KDEN), Kansas City International Airport (KMCI), and airports across the U.S. West Coast. The DOT has rolled out new incentives to ramp up controller hiring and in June unveiled a sweeping plan that includes upgrades to decades-old ATC equipment.
Chaos at Newark
According to the New York Times, controllers managing Newark airspace have reported equipment issues for years. Recently, these have been exacerbated due to staffing shortages and aging infrastructure.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in June found that ATC staffing levels have been declining for 15 years, driving a shortage of more than 3,000 controllers. Many control towers nationwide are understaffed, including the New York terminal radar approach control (TRACON) facility (N90) that manages airspace for LaGuardia (KLGA) and John F. Kennedy International (KJFK) airports.
Until July 2024, N90 also handled traffic at Newark. That month, the FAA transferred the responsibility to Area C of the Philadelphia TRACON, which receives radar and communications data from a different New York facility.
The FAA said the switch was intended to address understaffing at N90. But the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), the union that represents controllers, criticized the implementation of the move. In the following months, controllers anonymously reported issues receiving communications from New York.
The FAA in June said the Philadelphia TRACON has 22 fully certified controllers, with a further 22 in the training pipeline. But even for experienced controllers, learning the ins and outs of a new swath of airspace can take years.
Compounding the shortages is antiquated infrastructure. Per the Government Accountability Office, about three-quarters of the nation’s ATC systems are “unsustainable” or “partially unsustainable.” Those concerns came to fruition in April and May, when Newark controllers reported two 90-second radar and communications blackouts.
According to the DOT, the April outage was caused by a burnt copper telecommunications wire, which was replaced by a fiber optic line earlier this month. The second in May was due to failures of both primary and redundant communication systems.
“These events have raised questions about FAA’s management of the relocation, including impacts on system redundancy, controller staffing and training, and operational resilience,” the DOT wrote in its announcement of the audit.
The FAA is addressing these issues by establishing new, high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between New York and Philadelphia. It is also building a standard terminal automation replacement system (STARS) hub in Philadelphia to localize the transmission of radio and communications data.
The DOT’s ATC modernization plan proposes building an additional six ARTCCs and 15 towers with colocated TRACONs. Industry stakeholders, including NASA, have said the upgrades are long overdue.
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