Even Transportation Secretary’s Wife Avoids Newark Amid Weeks Of Delays
Flight delays and cancellations are so bad at Newark’s Liberty International Airport that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy changed his wife’s flight this week to nearby LaGuardia Airport so she could ensure her flight would arrive on time.
He acknowledged changing his wife’s flight, but insisted the move wasn’t over safety concerns while testifying Wednesday before the House Appropriations Subcommittee. He explained that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is working to restore reliable radar and communication infrastructure to ease ongoing flight delays and cancellations at Newark.
It comes the same day as Duffy and the FAA are meeting with major U.S. airlines — like Delta, United and American — about how many flights can safely operate at Newark. Right now, there are about 77 flights in and out of EWR every hour, but the FAA is proposing limiting that number to just 56 flights an hour until June 15 when construction on a new runway is slated to end.
THE NEWARK MELTDOWN
Weeks of flight disruptions at Newark have stemmed from radar and communications outages between air traffic controllers and planes flying in and out of the airport, one of the nation’s busiest.
Duffy blamed the recent system failures at Newark on a 2024 move to shift airspace control at EWR from a facility in New York to Philadelphia’s TRACON.
The FAA on Tuesday defended the move, citing an inability to reach staffing goals and a “low training success rate” in New York.
After airspace control for EWR was switched to Philadelphia TRACON, Duffy said in his testimony that communications infrastructure wasn’t properly tested. “They didn’t test and make sure the lines were hardened, the communication was hardened,” he said.
Air traffic controllers in charge of the Newark airspace have lost communication and radar contact with planes in their control multiple times in recent weeks, leading the FAA to slow air traffic at the airport, causing ongoing delays and cancelations.
He added that the FAA is now laying fiber lines and working with Verizon to restore reliability. Last week, the FAA unveiled a 3-year plan to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system, replacing outdated technology and building six new control centers for the first time since the 1960s.
WHAT’S NEXT
It’s not a quick fix, Duffy told lawmakers. The air traffic controller shortage has been decades in the making. Last year, the FAA had more than 11,000 certified or nearly-certified controllers, but around 14,000 are needed to reach full staffing levels — so the nation is more than 3,000 controllers short.
Duffy said the FAA is ramping up efforts to address the air traffic controller shortfall by bringing in more teachers at the FAA Academy and tutors to help cut student dropout rates which sit around 35%.
He said the agency is aiming to hire about 2,000 controllers this year.
The FAA is also working to keep experienced controllers on the job with a 20% upfront bonus.
Why can’t other controllers go to EWR? It’s not that simple. “It takes a year even for an experienced controller to get trained up in New York, in the Newark airspace... You just can’t move them around,” Duffy explained Wednesday. That, along with how long it takes to train a new controller (more than 2-3 years), is why this problem, Duffy said, will “take one, two, even three years” to fix.
