Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR) is off to a troubling start to the week.
For the eighth consecutive day, the bustling airport in New Jersey is delaying and canceling hundreds of flights with no sign of a return to normalcy. According to FlightAware, Newark experienced 482 delays and 141 cancellations on Sunday alone. By 2 p.m. EDT on Monday, the flight tracker reported 270 delays and 150 cancellations.
The disruptions at Newark are fueled by a combination of staffing shortages, equipment failures, and ongoing construction on one of the airport’s three runways used for commercial traffic. The situation gained added attention following United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby’s claim Friday that “over 20 percent of the FAA controllers for EWR walked off the job” in the past few days.
“Keep in mind, this particular air traffic control facility has been chronically understaffed for years,” Kirby wrote in a message to customers. “Without these controllers, it’s now clear—and the FAA tells us—that Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.”
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), which represents about 20,000 controllers, engineers, and other aviation safety specialists, on Monday said no controllers walked off the job. Rather, they took absence under the Federal Employees Compensation Act after they “temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear, or talk to them,” the union said.
Major Disruptions
Newark is one of United’s seven main U.S. hubs, and the airline has been disproportionately affected. Over the weekend, for example, it accounted for more than half of the airport’s delays and about 22 percent of cancellations, per FlightAware data. On Saturday, it began cancelling 35 round-trip flights per day on its Newark schedule, a reduction of about 10 percent.
Kirby on Friday urged the FAA to designate Newark a “slot controlled Level 3 airport.” Only three other U.S. airports—LaGuardia (KLGA), Kennedy International (KJFK), and Reagan National (KDCA) in Washington, D.C.—require a slot for all takeoffs and landings.
The delay data paint a grim picture. The FAA’s real-time airport status system shows arrivals facing average delays of four hours due to staffing shortages and low cloud ceilings, while runway construction is causing gate hold and taxi delays up to 30 minutes in length
The disruptions have maintained a painful consistency over the past eight days, with just under 500 delays each on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. There were 253 cancellations during that span.
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), the nation’s largest flight attendants union, on Friday urged all airlines operating from Newark to reduce planned flights until the staffing crisis is resolved.
“We support every effort to secure the funding necessary to staff up and provide the resources that are a decade overdue for our air traffic controllers to be able to do their jobs,” Sara Nelson, president of AFA-CWA, said in a statement.
A Perfect Storm
According to the FAA’s Monday operations plan, low cloud ceilings, ongoing runway construction, and “staffing constraints” at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility are driving disruptions at Newark.
Philadelphia TRACON controllers are responsible for managing Newark airspace after the FAA transitioned that responsibility from the New York TRACON (N90) in July. As part of the move, several controllers were forced to relocate from New York to Philadelphia, drawing the ire of a “dismayed” NATCA.
“The FAA made this decision to address short staffing at N90,” the union said in a statement. “However, NATCA has repeatedly voiced concerns that the reassignment of the airspace will not only fail to address the existing staffing shortage but will also create an even more significant staffing shortage than presently exists with the airspace in New York.”
The staffing shortfall is stark. According to the FAA’s latest Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, as of September 2023, N90 had only 130 certified professional controllers (CPCs)—well below the Collaborative Resource Workgroup’s (CRWG) 2024 target of 226, which is based on NATCA and FAA data. The tower at Newark Airport had just 28 CPCs out of the CRWG’s target of 37.
“What we’re seeing here at the Philadelphia TRACON…that actually can be what’s going to happen across the country,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who visited the facility on Friday, said during a press conference.
Controller shortages have been persistent and widespread. Per the same FAA data, U.S. airport terminals and en route facilities faced a shortfall of 4,000 CPCs. The FAA is working to “supercharge” controller hiring with new incentives such as cash bonuses. But despite those efforts, NATCA estimates U.S. airports remain about 3,000 controllers short.
Equipment outages, which the FAA initially cited as the cause of delays and cancellations, are also driving disruptions. On Friday, Duffy described the country’s ATC system as “incredibly old” but said that flying remains safe.
“We use floppy disks. We use copper wires,” Duffy said. “The system that we’re using is not effective to control the traffic that we have in the airspace today.”
Solutions on the Horizon
Duffy has repeatedly pledged to implement a “state-of-the-art” system at ATC facilities nationwide, which could take three to four years. During a press conference in March, he said he would request “tens of billions of dollars” from Congress to support the effort. During a Thursday press conference, Duffy said further details on the plan will be revealed in the coming days.
“We have to make sure [controllers] have the proper equipment and are appropriately staffed,” Chris Rocheleau, acting FAA administrator, said Thursday.
The FAA is implementing new ATC hiring incentives, including bonuses for completing training, working at hard-to-staff facilities, and choosing to stay on the job after becoming eligible for retirement. NATCA in February decried a proposal to raise the ATC retirement age as “not effective” in mitigating shortages. But the union was part of the agreement on controller hiring incentives, and president Nick Daniels spoke Thursday alongside Duffy.
“This is progress, but we know that staffing is one part of the bigger picture,” Daniels said. “Our air traffic control system also urgently needs technology upgrades and infrastructure improvements. These are long-standing challenges that we can no longer have delayed.”
Though new incentives are now in place, it takes several years for prospective controllers to complete academy and on-the-job training before working as a CPC. With runway work at Newark scheduled to last through mid-June, travelers should brace for continued disruptions.
Correction: A previous version of this article included an incorrect last name for Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson and has since been updated.
