Why the US air traffic control is subject to
On May 6, 2025 in Newark, Newark, Newark, in Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, can be seen.
Andres Kudacki | Getty pictures
Air traffic controls have been burdened for years, but a failure of 90 seconds in the past month revealed how decades of lack of personnel, lower investments and patchwork solutions for those who lead aircraft through some of the most overloaded airspace in the world.
The failure also triggered hundreds of flight delays and disturbed the journey for thousands of people for days. Less than two weeks later, on Friday, there was another similar failure in the same facility, although it was overnight than there are far fewer planes in the air.
The managers of Airline managers have stuck to upgrades due to expensive delays for years in order to remedy the aging air traffic infrastructure and end the lack of personnel.
With the CEOs of the largest US airlines, transport secretary Sean Duffy presented a plan on Thursday to replace dated radar and communication systems throughout the US airspace.
Duffy did not give a price, but said that the job would cost billions of dollars and added on Thursday that these funds are required by the congress “in advance”.
“The system we have here is not worth saving,” said Duffy at the event. “It's too old.”
Airlines, Airbus, AerospaceThe unions and other industry members welcomed a home spending proposal of $ 12.5 billion to improve air traffic control on Thursday and said that a further $ 18.5 billion of emergency financing will be necessary over the next three years to improve upgrades and improved staff.
Some Democrats said they had been encouraged by Duffy's new proposal, but criticized the layoffs of the dozens of dozens of air management employees at the beginning of this year, which included no air traffic controls.
“If America wants to remain the gold standard in flight safety, we need intelligent investment sinks investments and financing cuts,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-il., In a statement on Thursday.
What is the problem with Newark?
In the afternoon of April 28th, air traffic controllers have dark radar screens in a facility in Philadelphia who are responsible for the management of aircraft to and to the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and could not speak to airplanes for more than a minute.
The failure took about 30 seconds. According to the FAA, it took another 30 to 60 seconds for aircraft to reappear on radarscopes.
Pilots for large US airlines say they are specially designed for such failures.
A failure of just a few seconds “is an eternity for air traffic controls,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a retired air security researcher from the US National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA.
The incident, which was not the first time that equipment failures, was so frightening that some “took a break to recover from the stress of several recent failures,” said the FAA.
According to flightsware, more than 1,500 Newark flights were delayed in the week after the failure. United airlinesOn May 3, it said that on May 3rd that 35 flights per day broke off its schedule to facilitate the burden on the company and the customer.
On Friday, the FAA announced that on Wednesday it should meet airlines about possible flight cuts in Newark to facilitate the burden there.
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A Newark Landenbahn was also closed for the construction and contributing disorders.
A similar radar and communication failure occurred on Friday in the same facility, the aircraft monitored and depart from the Newark Airport.
New steps
On Wednesday, the FAA announced that it would improve the line -up in the establishment of Philadelphia and work on repairing communication lines that feed data for Newark flights to controllers. It is said that a temporary security system is to be installed there to “provide a redundancy during switching to a more reliable fiber -optical network”.
New upgrades cannot come early enough.
“We have computers and I have children, today in 2025 that are based on Windows 95 and Floppy Disks,” said Nick Daniels, President of the National Air Verkehrs Controllers Association, in an interview in March.
The FAA last year said that the average age of your towers is 40 and that most radar systems approach 40 years. “The system forms the system, including the risk of service disorders,” it said.
The plan Duffy presented on Thursday called for the exchange of 618 radars and the construction of six new air traffic control centers as well as the installation of new fiber optic, wireless and satellite systems to replace old communication systems.
People are waiting on May 5, 2025 in Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark, Newark.
Spencer Platt | Getty pictures
Accident pulls urgency
The incident of April 28 and the previous failures did not cause accidents, but the failures have more concerned about an outdated system and chronic lack of air traffic controls, especially in busy airspace in New York City.
According to the FAA, US airlines carry out a total of around 45,000 flights per day.
The urgency to fix persistent problems achieved a new level American airlines Regional Jet on January 29 and killed all 67 people on board the aircraft. It was the most fatal air crash in the United States since 2001.
“It shouldn't take a tragedy to solve this problem.” Jetblue Airways CEO Joanna Geraghty said at the event of the transport department on Thursday in Washington, DC, as the only airline that is headquartered in New York City.
“Let's do it,” she said.
Why is Newark such a problem?
Newark is already concerned with space restrictions.
According to its operator, the port authority of New York and New Jersey, around 414,000 flights landed last year, 11% less than John F. Kennedy, in Queens, New York. But Newark is about the size of Half JFK.
Technology disorders and lack of staff have been particularly hard for Newark in the past few days. Last year, the FAA controllers laid the Newark from a facility on Long Island, New York, aircraft and Laguardia and JFK Airport in Queens – to a remote station in Philadelphia. The move should make the overload and load on the Long Island facility easier, but there are still problems.
An inside view of Newark Airport, since travelers eight days in a row in a row, united airlines cancel routes and lack of staff in Newark, New Jersey, USA, on May 6, 202, 202
Mostafa Bassim | Anadolu | Getty pictures
The lack of personnel traffic of air traffic members annoyed the airlines managers who strive to benefit from strong demand, but are exposed to high costs due to a lack of controllers.
“Remember that this special flight control facility has been chronically understaffed for years, and without these controllers it is now clear – and the FAA tells us – that New Wark Airport cannot cope with the number of aircraft that will be planned in the coming weeks and months,” said Scott Kirby, who announced the customer's excerpt on May 2.
Before April 26, four flights per day were canceled in April in April, but according to Aviation Analytics company Cirium, this rose to 39 a day to Monday. About 80% of the flights were scheduled for this date in April, but fell to 63%, “far below the forms of industry,” said Cirium.
Slope it
The US Transport Minister Sean Duffy speaks to the media outside the White House in Washington, DC, USA, May 6, 2025.
Kent Nishimura | Reuters
Duffy said that the flight is safe. After visiting Philadelphia after the failure of April 28, he said that the FAA would slow down the arrival as a whole, if not.
The CEO of United, Kirby, told the employees in a memo on Wednesday that flying from and from Newark was safe. He said that the airline's pilots have thousands of hours of experience and training through procedures to “restore communication when controllers lose radio contact in order to safely navigate the plane at their destination”.
The airlines were looking for capacity limits to support the overload, and the final disorder was no exception.
“United has been asking the US government to use its authority for * years * to limit the number of flights to what the airport can realistically avoid,” said Kirby to the employees in a note. “Last failure to make these changes had led to the circumstances that the United and especially our customers have now confronted.”
In 2016, the FAA flight restrictions at the airport made it easier and Kirby said that the FAA was supposed to return to previous rules.
“For a long time it is to treat the crown jewel that it is,” he told the employees in the Wednesday note with the code of the airport. “We will continue to work closely with the FAA and [Transportation Department] To repair EEA once and for all and to deliver the first -class air traffic system that deserve it. “
Lack of personnel
According to the Controllers' Union, the NATCA, the United States has around 10,800 air traffic controls.
“In the past eight years we have had 146,000 applicants and we have hired 7,905 of them,” said Chris Wilbanks, Vice President of Mission Support at FAA, who is responsible for the hiring and training of controllers, in the interview in March. “Less than 10% of the people who apply for the job [Oklahoma training] Academy and then a degree to go into the field. “
The captain of United Airlines, captain Deon Byrne, checks her phone when she arrives in Newark, Newark, Newark Liberty International Airport, in Newark, New Jersey on May 6, 2025.
Andres Kudacki | Getty pictures
In the past financial year, the aim of the FAA was to stop 1,800 controllers.
“We will lose 35% of those at the academy. We will still lose 20% as soon as they are on site.
The exhausting job requires that air traffic controls retire at the age of 56, and the applicants of the academy cannot be older than 30 years old. Many have to work for six days due to the bottlenecks.
Duffy recently increased financial incentives such as a higher wage for air traffic controls. The starting salary is around 45,000 US dollars, the union's Daniels said, although the middle salary for a US Air Traffic Controller is $ 144,580 per year, according to the US Ministry of Labor.
