Newark flight delays launched by a failure of air traffic control

Air traffic controllers lost contact with planes to head to Newark Liberty International Airport last week, said their union, detailing equipment failure that has led to massive flight delays and has raised more concerns about the aging of the American aviation infrastructure and staff shortages.

The controllers who guide thefts in and outside the New Jersey airport on April 28 “have temporarily lost the radar and communications with the plane under their control, unable to see, hear or speak to them,” said the National Air Traffic Controlrs Association, their union, in a statement.

Staff shortages followed the incident, which was so serious that some of the controllers involved “took time to recover from the stress of several recent breakdowns,” the Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday.

Last week, last week, according to the flight site, the disturbances experienced more than 1,500 delays in New Jersey airport.

“Our anchored air traffic control system affects our workforce,” said FAA. “We work to make sure that current telecommunications equipment is more reliable in the New York region by establishing a more resilient and redundant configuration with local exchange carriers.”

The FAA and the Union did not say how long the breakdown lasted, but Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the issue, that it was nearly 90 seconds.

United Airlines said on Friday that it would reduce 35 flights per day of its New York region center in Newark due to delays, in the hope of putting more soft in the system and facilitating disturbances.

In a note to customers, CEO Scott Kirby said on Friday that the “technological problems last week had been aggravated, more than 20% of FAA controllers for EWR left work”.

“This particular air traffic control installation has been in chronic sub -employed 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,” Kirby said in his note.

The union denied that the controllers left the post and explained that the workers had taken leave under the law on the remuneration of federal employees, which “covers all federal employees who are physically injured or are experiencing a traumatic event at work”.

The United States has faced a shortage of air controllers for years. The Trump administration recently deployed new incentives to hire and keep the controllers, who are required to retire at 56.

Last year, the FAA moved the controllers who are responsible for the aircraft arriving and starting from Newark from a Long York Long York installation in another installation in Philadelphia, hoping to reduce overloaded controllers that also generated traffic for the main New York airports.

The airspace is among the most crowded in the world.

“The port authority has invested billions to modernize Newark Liberty, but these improvements depend on an entirely personal and modern federal traffic system,” said the Port York and New Jersey, which supervises the main airports in the New York region on Monday. “We continue to urge the FAA to deal with the shortages of current staff and to accelerate the technological upgrades long expected which continue to cause delays in the most frequented aerial corridor in the country.”

US transport secretary Sean Duffy visited the Philadelphia center last week and said that he would unveil plans for a “brand new air traffic control system” this week.

“The system we use is not effective in controlling the traffic we have today,” he told journalists last week.

Despite the aging technology, Duffy stressed that the system was safe because the FAA will slow down, if not the land, the planes if the air traffic controllers have constraints of capacity.

New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, urged Duffy to deal with staff deficits in the installation of Philadelphia which supervises Newark as well as in New York installations which controls traffic in and outside Laguardia airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport, both in Queens. Among the reductions of moving and service of Philadelphia, Murphy wrote: “It is obvious that one or the other effort led to the desired result.”

Murphy asked Duffy to prioritize the region in future investments.

“We expect millions of additional passengers next year while we are preparing to welcome the finals of the World Cup and must avoid additional disturbances or stumps on the system,” said Murphy in his letter.

Tracking and bad weather has added to Newark Travel Snarls in recent days.