Don’t expect the problems at Newark Airport to end anytime soon, experts say
By Pete Muntean, Alexandra Skores, and Ray Sanchez, CNN
(CNN) — A communications system reliant on floppy disks and copper wires. Radars operated with a remote line described as “a long extension cord.” Multiple air traffic controllers on trauma leave to recover from the stress of technical failures that caused them to lose contact with planes. And the closure of a runway for construction.
The result: Thousands of delays and flight cancellations over the last two weeks at Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the nation’s busiest airports. It’s a perfect storm, with one air traffic controller describing the loss of communications alone as “the most dangerous situation you could have.”
And with summer travel season approaching, the crisis at the New Jersey airport could mean weeks, if not months, of misery for travelers.
“It will be a dreadful summer, particularly around the high-volume holidays of the Fourth of July and Labor Day,” said Peter Goelz, a CNN aviation analyst and former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.
While the air traffic controllers who went on leave could be back on the job next month, the technology that failed them last week cannot be fixed or replaced quickly, meaning there’s a chance it will keep failing. Indeed, it happened again on Friday, with air traffic controllers handling flights approaching and departing Newark losing radar for about 90 seconds overnight, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
When will Newark – considered a microcosm of the problems plaguing America’s aviation system – get back to some semblance of normalcy? Not anytime soon, according to experts.
“It just can’t be done quickly,” said Colin Scoggins, a former FAA military specialist and retired air traffic controller, referring to upgrades to the air traffic system and the hiring of new controllers.
On Thursday, the US Department of Transportation announced a three-year-plan to build a “brand-new air traffic control system” by 2028. The plan will replace “core” infrastructure, including radar, software, hardware and telecommunications networks, as well as the copper wiring that failed, impacting flights at Newark, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
“What you saw in Newark, you will see variations of that through the airspace in the coming years, unless we undertake this mission,” Duffy told CNN after making the announcement.
On April 28, communications crashed at a Philadelphia air traffic control facility. The center handles aircraft in and out of Newark – roughly 85 miles north. A controller, who asked not to be identified, said he returned from a break to find co-workers recovering from an outage that lasted from 60 to 90 seconds. They could not see planes on radar scopes or communicate with pilots.
The crash knocked out information from radars located at an FAA facility in Westbury, New York, where the air traffic controllers formerly managed flights heading to Newark. Airspace control was transferred to the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Control Facility (TRACON) last July and, since the move, the radars have been operated with what one source called a remote extension cord-like line.
A single data feed connecting the two facilities failed, according to the controller, who said the feed had crashed at least two times before. More than a thousand flights were canceled as a precaution. And the incident, though brief, highlighted the flaws of an antiquated air traffic control system long afflicted by staffing shortages.
Controllers ‘can’t take anymore’
Five FAA employees – a supervisor, three controllers and one trainee – ended up taking 45 days of trauma leave after the outage, according to the air traffic controller.
CNN aviation and transportation analyst Mary Schiavo, a former Department of Transportation inspector general, said controllers who “don’t feel they are well enough to come back and a doctor agrees” can apply to the Department of Labor to extend their leave.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said the controllers on leave represented 20% of the air traffic control staff at the radar facility responsible for Newark. He said the control facility has been “chronically understaffed for years.”
About 15 to 20 flights were being controlled by Newark Liberty approach controllers when communication and radar went down on April 28, according to an analysis by flight tracking site Flightradar24.
The FAA on Wednesday said it will increase air traffic controller staffing but did not provide a specific number.
The area in the Philadelphia TRACON responsible for Newark traffic has 22 certified controllers and 21 controllers and supervisors in training, with 10 of the latter receiving on-the-job training, the FAA said in a statement.
The US needs more than 3,000 new air traffic controllers to reach adequate levels, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a union representing 10,800 professional controllers.
Nationwide staffing is at its lowest point in nearly 30 years, Nick Daniels, president of the controllers union, testified before Congress in March.
The most recent FAA data shows that across all airport towers and terminal approach facilities nationwide, only about 70% of staffing targets were filled by fully certified controllers as of September 2023. When controllers in training are included, that rose to about 79%.
Despite various initiatives for new hiring and increasing the starting salary for academy trainees by 30%, hiring and retaining controllers has been tough. Strict certification requirements coupled with burnout from long hours and job stress have contributed to the shortage.
Training a new controller can take up to seven years. Approximately 40% to 50% of applicants do not successfully finish the demanding courses at the FAA academy, according to experts.
“Air traffic controllers can’t take anymore. They’ve been working 60-hour weeks for years and years – six days a week,” CNN analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie said.
Reaching adequate air traffic controller staffing levels could take years, according to Scoggins.
Newark exposes ‘vulnerability’
The April 28 outage resulted in two weeks of chaos for passengers and a public outcry among government and airline officials. The breakdown was caused by failures in the copper wiring that transmits information from Long Island to Philadelphia, a source told CNN.
“What we use today is copper wires. We are one of the last institutions, last businesses, that actually use copper wires,” Duffy told reporters Thursday.
“We should be using fiber, but it’s copper. We use radar from the 1970s, some of them are from the 80s… So this technology is 50 years old that our controller has used to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.”
Some controllers still use floppy disks to upload data onto computers that date to the early 1990s, according to experts.
The FAA said in a statement Wednesday it plans to add three new “high-bandwidth telecommunications connections” from New York to Philadelphia, replace copper lines with fiber-optic technology, and deploy a backup system to provide more speed and reliability.
In the longer term, Duffy announced a day later the complete, three-year reconstruction of the nation’s air traffic control system he said will be more reliable than the current antiquated technology.
The plan will involve critical upgrades of communications, surveillance, automation and facilities. By 2028, more than 4,600 sites will get new high-speed network connections replacing antiqued telecommunications lines with fiber, wireless and satellite links, the department said.
“But we are going to focus on Newark first,” Duffy told CNN before Thursday’s announcement of the three-year plan.
The chaos at Newark was compounded by the closure of its busiest runway for “rehabilitation work” that is not expected to be completed until mid-June.
Another big contributing factor was the decision to move Newark’s approach controllers to Philadelphia last summer.
In July, the Federal Aviation Administration relocated about two dozen controllers overseeing flights heading to and from Newark, transferring them from the Long Island facility to a site in Philadelphia. The FAA at the time said the move would help address the staffing problems and growing air traffic congestion.
Within weeks, at least a half-dozen controllers reported what they described as serious safety issues caused by failures to collaborate between the two locations, CNN has reported.
Before the move to Philadelphia, FAA experts downplayed safety concerns, concluding the odds of a dangerous communications breakdown were extremely unlikely: 1 in 11 million, according to an internal report obtained by CNN.
Controllers in Philadelphia still rely on radar on Long Island that transmits data to Philadelphia via telecommunications lines. Two air traffic controllers told CNN the feed had failed at least twice after the move.
Kirby said United has asked the federal government to put level three slot controls in place at Newark as a short-term fix – limiting the number of flights any airline could schedule to take off or land at the airport.
“If they throttle back the scheduling of the flights then it’s going to be a half decent summer but there’s not going to be any flights available to get people where they want to go though,” Soucie, the CNN safety analyst, said.
“The reason we’re focusing on Newark right now is because it was the perfect storm – the equipment failures, the lack of personnel, the fact that they had just moved quite a few controllers over to the Philadelphia center,” he added.
“And the fact that it had all these things happen all at once, at one time, shows the vulnerability of all of the air traffic control centers.”
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CNN’s Aaron Cooper, Blake Ellis, Casey Tolan, Kyung Lah, Melanie Hicken, Rene Marsh, Amanda Musa, Chris Boyette and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.
