Recent radar and communication outages at Newark Liberty International Airport have raised alarming concerns. Each of these incidents further signifies the serious reliability problems plaguing our nation’s air traffic control system. Sean Duffy, the Secretary of the newly created Department of Future Transportation, accompanied President Donald Trump to call out these disasters. They ducked questions about how these calamities do anything but reinforce their multibillion-dollar obsession with completely overhauling the outdated air traffic control paradigm that has wreaked havoc across the United States.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is scheduled to conference with airlines in the near future. They’ll advocate for extending operational limits further into the summer months, to address persistent safety issues. A lengthy construction project on one of Newark’s runways has wreaked havoc. In recent days, this inability has resulted in hundreds of domestic U.S. flight cancellations and delays.
On Sunday, a new software update prevented the airport’s radar from going down after a telecommunications line cut a second time. At the time, this was the third such radar outage in the prior two weeks. Unfortunately, the FAA had to deal with the same troubles on Friday and April 28th. In each case, radar and communications systems lost power temporarily, cutting air traffic controllers’ ability to see or speak to planes.
Duffy continued to criticize the Federal Aviation Administration for their decision to control Newark’s air traffic from Philadelphia, around 85 miles away from the airport. He contended that the agency still should have installed its own, separate dedicated radar system in Philadelphia. Counting on a signal sent over the pipeline from New York has turned out to be something of a pipe dream.
“The Biden-Buttigieg FAA bungled this move without properly hardening the telecom lines feeding the data, which was already well-known to be error-prone.” – Sean Duffy
Duffy described her ambitious vision to overhaul the country’s crumbling air traffic control system. This blueprint invests to install 4,600 new high-speed data connections and replace 618 radars across the country. He pointed out that the money needed to retrofit any such upgrade would be in the billions of dollars.
Recent chaos at Newark has pushed Duffy to action. He is dedicated to calling for an investigation into the move last year of Newark air traffic controllers from New York City to Philadelphia. He wants to find out why, long before it became so pressing, action was not taken to head off the problems that now have the facility in such disrepair.
Controllers have raised alarm about the systems’ reliability after two major past outages. Duffy took precautionary measures by halting all traffic at Newark for about 45 minutes during a recent incident to ensure safety while the system was being monitored.
Chris Meagher, FAA spokesperson, shot down Duffy’s criticism. He reminded industry that the focus needs to be on addressing issues, not on finger pointing.
“Secretary Duffy has a tough job. But he needs to spend more time doing what the American people are paying him to do — fix problems — and less time blaming others.” – Chris Meagher
The situation at Newark Airport highlights broader issues within the nation’s air traffic management system and raises questions about whether adequate steps have been taken to modernize and secure critical infrastructure essential for safe air travel. Conversations are still active between the FAA and airlines about what operational caps may be appropriate. Stakeholders are hopeful that a long-term, holistic solution will materialize to stop a future lapse from happening again.
