WSJ: Veteran air-traffic controller speaks out about staffing and tech problems amid blackouts and delays at Newark airport
By Amanda Musa, CNN
(CNN) — A veteran air-traffic controller at the facility that handles flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport is calling for more resources and speaking out about the intense pressures workers face amid a staffing shortage and tech outages.
“It’s like playing 3-D chess at 250 miles an hour,” Jonathan Stewart told the Wall Street Journal in a recent interview. “Like anything else, you’re going to have a breaking point.”
Stewart supervises the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility that handles flights headed to or from the busy airport, which in recent weeks has been plagued with flight delays and cancellations fueled by runway construction, congestion and air traffic control staffing shortages.
It’s also the same facility that experienced blackouts on April 28 and May 9 that involved losing radar and screens going blank.
Stewart is among multiple traffic controllers on trauma leave, including some who were shaken by the blackouts, which left them unable to talk to planes or see where they were located.
“I don’t want to be responsible for killing 400 people,” he told the Journal.
Stewart – who has been writing plane callsigns in a notebook fearing another blackout – said he averted a potential mid-air collision between two aircraft flying nose-to-nose at the same altitude on May 4, the Journal reported.
CNN reached out to the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration for information on the May 4 incident.
Feeling shaken after the close call, Stewart said he sent an email to FAA managers criticizing their leadership and is now speaking out to set the record straight about controllers, the Journal reported.
While the controllers who manage Newark’s airspace are elite, they need more resources to be able to do their jobs, Stewart told the Journal.
Five controllers took a 45-day trauma leave after the outage on April 28 caused their radar screens to go blank for 90 seconds and their radios to go out for 30 seconds during the busy afternoon.
Thirty-eight certified professional controllers are needed to operate the facility, yet only 24 of the positions – 63% – are currently filled, according to the FAA.
Additionally, 16 of those controllers are due to return to a New York FAA facility next year.
The chaos at Newark has highlighted the challenges of an understaffed system in an already turbulent year for aviation that included a deadly collision between a passenger jet and US army helicopter at Washington, DC’s Reagan National airport.
Challenges at Newark
During the April 28 incident at Newark, a primary telecommunications line failed and a backup line did not kick in, FAA Deputy Chief Operating Officer Franklin McIntosh testified Wednesday at a Senate hearing.
The data lines were installed after the facility moved from New York to Philadelphia in July. Similar systems are in use across the US, said McIntosh, who acknowledged the tight staffing at TRACON. Just three controllers were working all Newark arrivals and departures for over an hour Monday night.
Two similar incidents have occurred at Newark’s airport within the last week. On Sunday morning, the FAA said it implemented a ground stop for flights heading to Newark because of a “telecommunications issue.” On May 9, another 90-second-long radar outage happened early in the morning at the facility.
Video obtained by CBS News shows the moment blank screens inside the Philadelphia TRACON facility came back online during the May 9 outage. CNN has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the video.
The Philadelphia facility, in part, guides aircraft approaching Newark airport before it hands off the planes to the airport tower, and guides planes that have just departed the airport.
Authorities have been working to address the challenges at Newark. Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau has said the FAA created an “emergency task force” to make sure the airport operates safely.
And this week, the agency initiated a “delay reduction meeting” with major airlines in the hopes that carriers will agree to limit flights ahead of the busy summer season to minimize cancellations and delays at the airport.
United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air all attended the meeting.
As for the staffing shortage, the FAA has said that staffing will also be increased at the Philadelphia facility, and there is a “healthy pipeline” of training classes filled through next July.
But hiring and retaining controllers has been tough.
The current shortage of air traffic controllers is near a 30-year low, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents 10,800 certified air traffic controllers across the country.
The control facility responsible for traffic at Newark has been “chronically understaffed for years,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a message earlier this month addressing the delays. He also said the shortage was compounded by over 20% of FAA controllers who “walked off the job” at Newark Airport last week.
Stewart told the Journal controllers hadn’t “walked off the job” and aren’t to blame for the recent delays.
The air traffic controller added that safety events might not be stressful initially, but can have a cumulative effect.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Alexandra Skores, Pete Muntean, Rene Marsh and Aaron Cooper contributed to this report.
