US plans to reduce flights at Newark Airport as air traffic control problems mount

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Business Insider

May 11, 2025, 1:41 PM ET


US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he plans to reduce the number of flights at Newark Liberty International Airport over the "next several weeks." Duffy spoke to NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, as another air traffic control outage again grounded flights at the airport. Operations have since returned to normal, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

"I hate delays, I hate cancellations," Duffy said. "But I want you to get where you're traveling. And if that means slowing down flights into Newark, we slow them down to make sure we can do it safely." In recent months, Newark has experienced a series of air traffic control equipment outages, which have raised concerns among travellers.

"There was a telecommunications issue at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace," the FAA said in a statement about the outage on Sunday. "The FAA briefly slowed aircraft in and out of the airport while we ensured redundancies were working as designed. Operations have returned to normal." Communications and radar displays at the airport suffered another outage on Friday, too, lasting about 90 seconds.

Duffy said in the interview on Sunday that he is "concerned about the whole airspace" in the United States because equipment used by most airports is now outdated. "The equipment that we use, much of it we can't buy parts for new," Duffy said. "We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber, and so this is concerning."

Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-transportation-sec-plans-reduce-newark-flights-coming-weeks-2025-5

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REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143457344

Too many flights have been a chronic issue FOR YEARS.

[Pinback]

1. The NYT's podcast "The Daily" had an informative episode about this on May 8.

— “A Frightening Time To Fly”: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/podcasts/newark-airport-delays.html

Investigative reporter Kate Kelly offers insight and analysis that I found enlightening .

ETA: The Dumpster Admin. tries to paint this as a set of technical problems, downplaying or ignoring the issue of staff shortages.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. They never really fully recovered after Raygun fired that initial set

and due to the mandatory retirement age, they were continually short-staffed. At least over the past 20 or so years, there are "feeders" from the military who had experience from the various wars (something they didn't have during the '80s other than the-then starting to age-out Vietnam War vets), but the air traffic has increased quite a bit over that time too, despite the consolidation of the airlines.

Some interesting tracking here - https://crp.trb.org/acrpwebresource12/understanding-air-service-and-regional-economic-activity/how-has-air-service-changed-over-time/

(since that org was formed by the FAA I am guessing it has been DOGEd and gutted now)

[Mawspam2]

2. Get rid of all those temperamental controllers and replace them with AI.

Or as Linda McMahon calls it, A1.

[DENVERPOPS]

3. they ought to go ahead and shut it down

soon, very soon, common people won't even be able to afford to fly......

[Pinback]

5. Ah, back to the good old days...

[Initech]

6. I'm tired of Trump fixing things.

Imagine this happened under any other president, Fox would be going apeshit.

[mpcamb]

9. "You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber"

This is the case in many airports. Fix it, rather than permit trump's his Qatari gold toy.

[Ms. Toad]

7. I have a flight through Newark on June 14.

I am anxiously awaiting the opportunity to switch to one which goes through Houston. Not looking foward to a landing AND takeoff from Newark.

[Blasphemer]

8. Easy to do when people can't afford to travel. nt