People wait in line for a delayed flight at Newark International Airport on May 5, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey.
Spencer Platt | Getty images
Air traffic controllers lost contact with airplanes that go to and from the Newark Liberty International Airport last week, said its union, which detailed a failure of the team that led to massive flight delays and raised more concerns about the aging of the US aviation infrastructure and the scarcity of personnel.
The controllers that guide flights inside and outside the New Jersey airport on April 28 “temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, listen or talk to them,” said the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers, their union, in a statement.
The shortage of personnel followed the incident, which was so severe that some of the controllers involved “have taken a free time to recover from the stress of multiple recent interruptions,” said the federal aviation administration on Monday.
There were more than 1,500 delays at the New Jersey airport last week, according to the FlightAware flight flight site, since the interruptions accumulated due to the shortage of air traffic controllers.
“Our outfly air traffic control system is affecting our workforce,” FAA said. “We are working to ensure that the current telecommunications team is more reliable in the New York area establishing a more resistant and redundant configuration with local exchange operators.”
The FAA and the Union did not say how much the interruption lasted, but Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, which were almost 90 seconds.
United Airlines On Friday he will cut 35 flights to the day of his center in the New York City area in Newark due to delays, hoping to put more lazy in the system and relieve interruptions.
In a note for customers, CEO Scott Kirby said Friday that “last week's technology problems were aggravated as more than 20% of FAA controllers for EWR left work.”
“This particular air traffic control installation has been chronic with little personal for years and without these controllers, it is now clear, and FAA tells us, that Newark airport cannot handle the amount of airplanes that are scheduled to operate there in the coming weeks and months,” Kirby said in his note.
The union denied that the controllers left work and explained that the workers took a free time under the Federal Employee Compensation Law, which “covers all federal employees who are physically injured or experience a traumatic event at work.”
The United States has faced a shortage of air traffic controllers for years. The Trump administration recently launched new incentives to hire and retain controllers, to which they must retire at 56.
Last year, FAA transferred the controllers responsible for the airplanes arriving and remained from Newark from a Long Island installation in New York to a different installation in Philadelphia, hoping to reduce overloaded controllers that also handled traffic for the main airports of New York City.
Airspace is one of the most congested in the world.
“The Port Authority has invested billions to modernize Newark Liberty, but those improvements depend on a federal system of modern and modern air traffic,” the New York and New Jersey port authority said on Monday, which supervises the main airports in the New York city area, in a statement. “We continue to urge FAA to address the continuous scarcity of personnel and accelerate technological updates that continue to cause delays in the busiest air corridor of the nation.”
The Secretary of Transportation of the United States, Sean Duffy, visited the Philadelphia facilities last week and said she will present plans for a “new air traffic control system” this week.
“The system we are using is not effective to control the traffic we have today,” journalists told journalists last week.
Despite aging technology, Duffy emphasized that the system is safe because the slow FAA, if not ground, airplanes in total if air traffic controllers have capacity limitations.
The governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, urged Duffy on Monday to address staff deficits at the Philadelphia facilities that Supervises Newark as in the New York facilities that controls traffic inside and outside the Laguardia airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport, both in Queens. From the movement reductions and philadelphia service, Murphy wrote: “It is evident that none of the efforts has led to the desired result.”
Murphy asked Duffy to prioritize the region in future investments.
“We expect millions of additional passengers next year while preparing to organize the World Cup finals and we must avoid additional interruptions or tensions in the system,” Murphy said in his letter.
The construction of the track and the bad weather added to Newark Travel Snarls in recent days.
