Why control of American air traffic is under tension

Air traffic controllers have been under tension for years, but a 90-second equipment failure last week revealed how decades of staff shortages, underinvestment and patchwork solutions for those who guide planes through some of the most congested air areas in the world.

The breakdown also sparked hundreds of flight delays, disturbing trips for thousands of travelers for days – again.

In the afternoon of April 28, air traffic controllers in an installation of Philadelphia which are responsible for the aircraft route to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey Black Radar screens and could not speak to planes for more than a minute.

The breakdown lasted about 30 seconds. It took 30 to 60 additional seconds for planes to reappear on radarscopes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Pilots for large American airlines say they are specially trained to manage such breakdowns.

But a breakdown of a few seconds “is an eternity for air traffic controllers,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a retirement investigator for air security for the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA.

The incident, which was not the first time that equipment breaks have reached installation, was so shocking that some have “taken time to recover from the stress of several recent breakdowns,” said FAA.

More than 1,500 Newark flights were delayed last week, according to Flightaware. United AirlinesWho manages a Newark center, said that it cut 35 flights per day from its schedule to facilitate the tension of its operation and its customers.

A Newark track was also closed for construction, adding to the disturbances.

The FAA said on Wednesday that it would strengthen staff in Philadelphia facilities and work to repair the communication lines that would feed data from the controllers for Newark flights. He said he was planning to install a temporary backup system to “provide redundancy during the transition to a more reliable network of optical fibers”.

Transport secretary, Sean Duffy, is expected to announce a major upgrading plan for the American air traffic control system on Thursday, which could force the congress to approve billions of additional funds.

“We have computers, and I do not make fun of you, today in 2025, which are based on Windows 95 and Disk Disks,” said Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Colninger Association, in an interview in March.

Last year, the FAA said that the average age of its towers was 40 years old and that most radar systems are approaching 40 years. “Aging facilities add a risk to the system, including the risk of service disturbances,” he said.

The April 28 incident and the previous breakdowns did not cause any accident, but failures have raised more concerns concerning an outdated system and chronic shortages of air controllers, especially in the highly frequented airspace in New York.

American air traffic controllers manage approximately 45,000 flights per day overall, according to the FAA.

The urgency of solving persistent problems has reached a new level after a Black Hawk army helicopter collided with a American airlines Regional jet on January 29, killing the 67 people aboard the plane. It was the deadliest air accident in the United States since 2001.

“It took a fatal accident of the outdoor airline to perform to attract everyone’s attention,” said Guzzetti.

Newark is already dealing with space constraints to start.

He treated around 414,000 flights last year, 11% less than John F. Kennedy International Airport, Queens, New York, according to data from their operator, the Port Authority in New York and New Jersey. But Newark is about half the size of JFK.

Technological problems and personnel deficits have been particularly difficult for Newark in recent days. Last year, the FAA moved controllers who take care of Newark of an installation in Long Island, New York – where planes are also sequenced at and from Laguardia and JFK airport in Queens – at a distant station in Philadelphia. This decision was aimed at facilitating congestion and expressing Long Island installations, but there are still problems.

The shortages of air traffic staff have upset the managers of airlines who are impatient to capitalize on high demand but are forced and are faced with high costs due to a lack of controllers.

“Keep in mind that this particular air traffic control installation has been in chronically under -effective for years and without these controllers, it is now clear – and the FAA tells us – that Newark airport cannot manage the number of planes that should work there in the weeks and months to come,” said United CEO, Scott Kirby, announcing calendar reductions.

Before April 26, four flights per day were canceled in Newark in April, on average, but which went to 39 per day to Monday, according to the Cirium aviation analysis company. About 80% of flights were on time in April before this date, but fell 63%, “well below industry standards,” said Cirium.

Duffy said plane trips was sure. After a visit to the establishment of Philadelphia last week, he said that the FAA would slow down, if not the stop, the arrivals completely if there was a shortage of air controllers.

United CEO, Kirby, told employees in a memo on Wednesday that stealing from Newark was safe. He said that the carrier’s pilots have thousands of hours of experience and procedures on procedures to “follow to restore communication if the controllers lose radio contact to sail on the plane safely until his destination”.

Airlines have requested capacity limits to help congestion, and the last disturbance was no exception.

“United has been urging the US government for * years * to use its authority to effectively limit the number of flights to what the airport can manage in a realistic manner,” Kirby told employees on Friday. “The failure past to bring these changes has led to the circumstances that United and, above all, our customers are now confronted.”

In 2016, the FAA attenuated the flight restrictions at the airport and Kirby said that the FAA should return to previous rules.

“It has been a long time to treat EWR as the jewel of the crown that it is,” he told employees on Wednesday, using the airport code. “We will continue to work in close collaboration with the FAA and [Transportation Department] To have EWR repaired once and for all and deliver the first class air traffic system to the country it deserves. “”

The United States has around 10,800 air traffic controllers, well below its full objective of 3,000 personnel, according to the controller union, NATCA.

“Over the past eight years, we have had 146,000 candidates and we have hired 7,905,” said Chris Wilbanks, vice-president of support for the Mission to the FAA who is in charge of hiring and the training of the controller, during the interview in March. “Less than 10% of people who apply for work actually go to the [Oklahoma training] Academy, then graduated to go out on the ground. “”

During the previous year, the FAA objective was to hire 1,800 controllers.

“We will lose 35% of those of the academy. We will lose an additional 20% once they are in the field, on vocational training. So we have not set 1,800 controllers,” said Wilbanks.

Extracting work requires that air traffic controllers will retire at 56, and candidates for the academy cannot be 30 years old. Many are forced to work for six -day work weeks due to shortages.

Duffy recently decided to increase financial incentives, such as a higher salary for air controllers. The starting salary is around $ 45,000, said the union Daniels, although the median salary for an American air traffic controller is $ 144,580 per year, according to the US Labor Department.