The FAA said it would take a series of immediate steps to shore up air traffic control (ATC) system failures that forced the agency to slow arrival rates at Newark Liberty Airport. But travelers flying from, to or through the large New Jersey airport still might endure a long summer of travel disruption.
"Our airspace is the safest because if there are issues, we don't fly," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a press briefing addressing the Newark situation.
Cancellations and delays in Newark started mounting on April 28, after the Philadelphia facility that has managed Newark air traffic since last summer lost radar and radio communications with aircraft for 90 seconds, forcing planes into a holding pattern. The incident so rattled controllers working that shift that four have taken short-term trauma leave, the Wall Street Journal reported. Controller radios went out again for a brief time later that week.
Since then, the FAA has managed congestion at Newark by implementing frequent ground delay programs, which have frequently caused average delays of several hours, in part due to staffing shortages. Flight cancellations also mounted as airlines, especially hub carrier United, adjusted to keep their broader operations on track.
In the days since April 28, cancellations at Newark often exceed 10% of flights, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Notably, United thinned its Newark operation by removing 35 flights from its daily schedule.
ATC technology problems, though the most concerning cause, aren't the only factor behind Newark's operational crunch.
Even in normal times, the airport is capacity challenged, and its ATC facility is understaffed. That situation led the FAA since the fall of 2023 to allow airlines to fly up to 10% less at Newark than would typically be required in order to retain their allotment of daily departure and landing rights, called slots. Runway construction, which lasts until June 15, is also substantially impacting traffic flow at Newark.
What the FAA will do
In a May 7 statement, the FAA laid out steps it is taking to resolve Newark's ATC technology issues. The agency said the system that processes its radar data is based in New York, and telecommunication lines feed that data to the Philadelphia facility that handles arrivals and departures.
Immediate steps to be taken include adding three high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the New York and Philadelphia facilities to improve speed and reliability; replacing copper telecommunications connections with updated fiber-optic technology; and deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia facility that will provide redundancy during the switch to the fiber-optic network.
The FAA also said it will establish a new radar data processing facility in Philadelphia so that data will no longer have to be transmitted from the New York hub.
Boosting staffing will also be key, though it may not be a quick fix. The FAA said the Philadelphia facility has 22 fully certified controllers and 21 controllers and supervisors in training, including 10 who are receiving on-the-job training.
"We have a healthy pipeline, with training classes filled through July 2026," the agency said, but it did not lay out plans for any immediate Philadelphia additions.
Since taking over the DOT in January, Duffy has aggressively called for funding to modernize an antiquated U.S. air traffic control system and has said Newark's ATC failures are symptoms of its aging. A September 2023 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office detailed 58 unsustainable or potentially unsustainable FAA systems that have "critical operational impacts on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace."
The DOT secretary held a press conference on May 8, detailing a proposal to devote tens of billions of dollars to overhaul the ATC system over the next three to four years.
The 2025-26 budget proposal put forward by the White House in early May requests $5 billion for national airspace system upgrades, including a $450 million down payment on a multiyear, multibillion-dollar radar replacement.
United's response
United, along with trimming its schedule, responded to the latest problems plaguing Newark by calling for the airport to be placed back under the stricter slot regime, called Level 3, that was in place until 2016. At that level, airline movements, schedules and schedule changes are more tightly managed than at Level 2 airports, Newark's current status.
An Embry-Riddle University study published last year in the Economics of Transportation journal found that the 2016 change led to increases in late arrivals at Newark by up to 23 minutes on average and that the share of late arrivals increased up to 14 percentage points.
Airline industry consultant Bob Mann of RW Mann and Co. said United CEO Scott Kirby's call for stricter slot rules at Newark could be self-serving, since it would help preserve United's dominant position there. Mann said United should do a better job of coordinating, prioritizing and timing its aircraft during peak Newark arrival times in order to reduce overloads that the ATC has to manage.
"You can either be an airline that throws 52 cards on the floor and tells the FAA to pick them up or you can give the 52 cards ordered by suit or rank, and the FAA will pay attention to them," he said.