The long flight delays and cancellations plaguing Newark’s Liberty International Airport and spilling over to airports across the U.S. can be traced to a week ago when air traffic controllers temporarily lost communications with planes in the sky, according to the controllers union.
Crews in the Philadelphia air traffic control facility that lines up flights going in out and of Newark lost radar and communications with the planes on April 28, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The outage left controllers “unable to see, hear, or talk to” planes under their control, union spokesperson Galen Munroe said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the brief problem and said traffic into the Newark airport was reduced afterward as a precaution to ensure safety. But that move led to the widespread delays and canceled flights.
After the breakdown, a number of controllers took leave under a contract provision that allows them to step away after experiencing a traumatic event on the job. Having those controllers on leave exacerbated staff shortages at the facility.
The flight disruptions that have trickled down to airports in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas renewed calls to upgrade aviation technology and infrastructure, and address the nationwide air traffic controller shortage, a problem the Trump administration has pledged to solve.
“The whole system needs to be redone,” Duffy said Tuesday at the White House. On Thursday, he plans to detail the administration’s multibillion-dollar proposal to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system that has been in the works since the aftermath of the deadly midair collision over Washington, D.C., in January. Congress will have to approve funding for that plan.
Controllers handling the planes in Newark lost communication for 30 seconds last week after the control center’s primary communication line went down and a backup line failed to kick-in, he said.
Backups when contact is lost
Former air traffic controllers said briefly losing contact with one plane was not uncommon but dropping communication with all of them would be unusual. Even then there are safeguards and backups. Duffy said that in this situation the backup line didn’t immediately come online.
“If the pilot doesn’t respond right away, you don’t have them set up where they could collide,” said Jordan Morales, who worked 12 years as a controller before leaving the job in 2022.
During a total outage, the control center would call an adjacent facility to take over the air space, he said. Airplanes also have built-in systems that allow pilots to know what’s around, he added.
“It’s a tense moment, particularly if it’s at critical point in the flight,” said Todd Yearly, who spent 13 years as a controller in Chicago.
Neither of the former controllers, though, said the latest trouble shook their confidence in flying. “Safety was maintained that should be the story. In the moment when it mattered, they did their job,” Yearly said.
Flight delays followed outage
After the communications outage, traffic was slowed in and out of the Newark airport, the nation’s 12th busiest.
United Airlines, which operates the most flights out of Newark by far, cut 35 daily Newark flights from its schedule beginning Saturday. United CEO Scott Kirby said the technology used to manage the planes failed more than once last week.
Kirby said it’s clear Newark won’t be able to handle the amount of planes currently operating there in the coming months. Last week, he called on the Federal Aviation Administration to limit arrival and departure slots at Newark — a practice used at three of the nation’s busiest airports where demand exceeds the airport’s capacity: Reagan National outside Washington and New York City’s LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International airports.
The union representing 55,000 flight attendants also has voiced concern, asking the airlines to cut flights operating out of Newark until the situation improves.
The FAA moved the controllers responsible for the Newark airport from a facility in Long Island, New York, to Philadelphia last year partly to try to address chronic staffing shortages at the New York facility. But only 24 of the 33 controllers responsible for the Newark airspace made the transfer, leaving the Philadelphia facility shorthanded.
At the time of the move, controllers union questioned whether the FAA had the equipment and procedures to handle the complicated transfer. Last fall, The Air Current trade magazine reported on several radar failures in Philadelphia related to lines that send data from New York to Philadelphia.
The Trump administration has said it wants to “supercharge” the air traffic controller workforce and address the shortage of controllers. It announced a program last week to help recruit new controllers and give existing ones financial incentives not to retire early.
But it takes years to train new air traffic controllers and get them certified. Duffy has said he hopes that the new hiring efforts might be able to have the system fully staffed within three or four years.
“It is absolutely going get worse,” David Soucie, a former FAA safety inspector, said in an interview. “And something needs to be done about it because of the fact that, first of all, it takes a long time to hire controllers and get them in place. And you can’t just turn on a switch, you can just go to the closet and pull out a new air traffic controller and say, here you go, we got new people now.”
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Associated Press reporter Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
