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A major glut of delays, cancelations and diversions have beset Newark Liberty International Airport over the last week, nixing hundreds of flights and stranding thousands of travelers at one of the country’s busiest airports.
The chaos, which included a terrifying 90-seconds where air traffic controllers were left without radar and communications on April 28 — was ignited by a burned-out copper wire, resulting in a domino effect that affected thousands of flights in the days to come.
The shocking incident took its toll on the air traffic controllers, at least five of whom took a 45-day trauma leave as a result of the outage, according to CNN.
But the cascading foul-up was the result of numerous points of failure, with the FAA chalking up the issues to everything from staffing shortages at the Philadelphia air traffic control center to a “rehabilitation project” underway that will keep one of the airport’s main runways closed until mid-June.
Others blamed United Airlines — responsible for around 75% of Newark airport’s flight traffic — for overcrowding the much smaller airport compared to others nearby like John F. Kennedy International Airport, or even peers like San Francisco or Miami.
“It’s just everything culminating and it’s the perfect storm of everything,” Kyle Bailey, a former FAA Safety Team Representative and aviation expert told The Post, noting Newark Airport is “a true international airport, but it’s the size of a big domestic airport,” taking up just 2,000 acres of land with two major runways and a third smaller strip.
(JFK is spread across nearly 5,000 acres with four runways.)
“The bottom line is the airport has become so unreliable over the years. It’s getting worse and worse and worse. It’s such a profitable hub for United that everybody is trying to get as many flights in and out of there as possible,” he said.
“It’s just mind boggling why United doesn’t just do something about it with overflow.”
One stranded traveler caught up in the logjam Monday has been at Newark airport since Saturday, where he traveled for a layover after visiting his girlfriend in Toronto — his first-ever trip on an airplane.
“I know I’ll probably never come to this airport again. It’s stressful. It seems like nobody cooperates. It’s just not a good environment they created,” Cody Stanley, 23, told The Post.
His flight to his final destination in Greensboro, North Carolina was canceled three times already, and said he’s planning on sleeping at the terminal until his departure, now scheduled for 9:51 p.m. Tuesday.
“It seems like nobody wants to take the time to give you the information you need,” he said of United Airlines.
United Airlines said the issue lies with the airport itself, going so far as to offer customers the ability to change their connection city to avoid Newark without additional charge.
In a letter to customers, United CEO Scott Kirby said Newark airport’s air traffic control center — which was relocated to Philadelphia last summer in an effort to ease congestion at other New York-area airports — has been “chronically understaffed for years,” and announced United was removing 35 daily roundtrip flights from the schedule at Newark.
“The FAA tells us that Newark Airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead,” Kirby wrote.
“It’s disappointing to make further cuts to an already reduced schedule at Newark, but since there is no way to resolve the near-term structural FAA staffing issues, we feel like there is no other choice in order to protect our customers,” Kirby said.
United had cut back on flights out of Newark even before Kirby’s announcement on Friday, and he has been sounding the alarm about Newark Airport’s problems for years.
“During the 15-year period from 2005 to 2019, Newark was the most delayed core airport in the system for 10 of those years,” he wrote in a July, 2021 letter to then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the-FAA chief chief Steve Dickson.
The FAA has experienced a persistent staffing shortage dating back years — the agency relying heavily on mandatory overtime and six-day workweeks in an attempt to make up the shortfall as it remains around 3,000 air traffic controllers shy of its staffing target, according to the agency.
Michael McCormick, a professor and air traffic management coordinator at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told CNN that the number of controllers dropped sharply after a 2013 government shutdown and the FAA has struggled to maintain their numbers ever since.
The extreme rigors of the job — and the FAA’s mandatory retirement age for controllers of 56 — have also contributed to continual downward pressure on their staffing numbers.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a union representing around 10,800 ATCs nationwide, said in March that staffing is at a 30-year low, warning that if the shortage is not addressed, “The FAA will struggle to maintain the current capacity of the system.”
Last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a $5,000 bonus for new air traffic controllers in an attempt to boost recruitment, warning that the current staffing situation is untenable
“You’re starting to see cracks in the system,” Duffy in a press conference Thursday. “It‘s our job to actually see over the horizon what the issues are and fix it before there is an incident that we will seriously regret.”
The FAA wrote on social media Monday afternoon that the outages caused by the outdated technology still in use at the agency is “affecting our workforce,” and that departing air traffic controllers cannot be “quickly” replaced due to it being a “highly specialized profession.”
Four hundred FAA employees were cut a month after President Trump was inaugurated, but Duffy said none were air traffic controllers or safety personnel.
That fact hasn’t stopped Democrats and left-leaning media outlets from making hay of Newark’s traffic woes, attempting to pin it on the Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting measures.
In a press conference Monday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), called for an Office of the Inspector General investigation into the mess, calling out DOGE and its “chainsaw” as deserving some of the blame.
“DOGE hacked a chainsaw and fired many people at the FAA who have not been replaced,” he said.
But Bailey said the Senate minority leader’s assessment is off-base.
“No, that’s not to blame. The people at the very top know what’s going on with the controllers,” he said.
“Believe me — if they were making serious cuts to that, the transportation secretary would be on the phone with Trump probably in two seconds.”
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