Radar Screens Go Black At Newark Again Friday Morning
Radar screens at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport went dark again early Friday morning — the second outage in two weeks.
The brief failure, described as a “telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display,” happened at 3:55 a.m. ET and lasted about 90 seconds, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Last week, a similar outage caused air traffic control (ATC) computer screens at Newark to go dark for 60 to 90 seconds, cutting off communication between controllers and aircraft. Below is an animation the New York Times put together, showing multiple planes circling the airspace, awaiting a safe opportunity to land during the April 28 outage.
WHERE WE’RE AT
Following the April incident, several controllers went on a 45-day medical leave as a result of the trauma, resulting in staffing shortages that caused hundreds of flight delays and cancellations. Federal rules require they get cleared by a doctor before returning. United Airlines pulled flights, and the FAA slowed traffic at the airport.
Since then, there have been reports of potentially a half dozen similar incidents in recent years.
On Thursday, the Department of Transportation announced plans for a new, “state-of-the-art” air traffic control system to replace the current “outdated” one. The plan includes building six new air traffic control centers for the first time since the 1960s and replacing its current decades-old telecommunications network to an internet protocol by 2028. Once approved and funded by Congress, the goal is to upgrade the systems over the next four years.