There has been a fourth alarming power failure at Newark International Airport, resulting in authorities needing to quickly reduce the amount of flights to prevent overcrowding.
Federal transportation leaders are demanding immediate changes at the New Jersey airport as the flight nightmare continues.
The Federal Aviation Administration will share a revised schedule, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNBC.
Duffy told the outlet that flyers will “see reductions.”
Newark airport currently has about 1200 daily flight arrivals and departures, according to the Port Authority of New Jersey.
The specific number of flights impacted has not yet been disclosed; but the FAA confirmed that they had private discussions with major airlines “to strike a fair balance between scaling down their operations at the airport and fulfilling the requirements of each airline.”
The Newark airport is also experiencing delays due to construction that is scheduled to end on June 15.
To help alleviate the pressure on air traffic controllers and align with the ongoing runway construction, the FAA suggested a maximum arrival rate of 28 aircraft per hour.
“The goal is to have a manageable number of flights land at Newark,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explained at a press briefing.
“Families shouldn’t have to wait four or five hours for a flight that never takes off.
“By lowering the number of flights, we can ensure the ones that are kept, they do actually take off and they do actually land.”
Once construction ends, the flights arrival rates are proposed to be increased to 34 flights per hour through October 25.
FLIGHT FRIGHT
The discussions come as the FAA investigates a fourth outage at Newark Liberty International Airport in the past three weeks.
The brief outage, which happened at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control center, did not affect any operations, according to the agency.
The Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control center is responsible for managing air traffic control in the airspace around Newark, NJ.com reported.
“Operations are normal after Philadelphia TRACON Area C lost radio frequencies for approximately two seconds around 11:35 a.m,” an FAA spokesman said on Tuesday.
“All aircraft remained safely separated.”
Just three weeks prior, on April 28, the TRACON facility lost total connection for 90 seconds.
What air traffic control changes have been announced by Sean Duffy?
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has asked for tens of billions of dollars to “fix
Here is what he announced on May 8:
- A “brand new air traffic control system” to be built by 2028
- New infrastructure such as radar, software, hardware and telecommunications networks
- Over 4,600 sites will get new high-speed network connections replacing old telecommunications lines with fiber, wireless and satellite links
- Over 25,000 new radios and 475 new voice switches will be deployed to maintain controller-pilot communications and reduce delays
- The Department Of Transportation will also replace 618 radars by 2027
- Six new air traffic control centers will be built for the first time since the 1960s
- Surface awareness initiative technology, which helps prevent close calls on the ground, will be expanded to 200 airports
- 174 new weather stations will be installed in Alaska
During the minute-and-a-half time span, controllers could not see or communicate with the aircrafts.
Newark’s ongoing issues have been attributed to the major staffing cuts at the control center.
Last year, the airport moved the TRACON facility from Westbury, NY, to Philadelphia, PA, hoping to ramp up staffing.
Instead, some controllers living in Westbury left rather than relocate.
The move from Westbury to Philadelphia also caused issues with information transfers, as there was no data backup system in place.
Duffy said that they are making “fast-track fixes” to help improve communication with the airport.
The fixes include new software patches and fiber optic data lines.
“The goal is to have this done as soon as possible,” he said.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said earlier in May that the airport “cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.”
Due to this perceived issue, United Airlines decided to cancel 35 round-trip flights out of Newark Airport per day.
“We feel like there is no other choice in order to protect our customers,” Kirby said in a letter to United Airlines passengers.
A spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement to The U.S. Sun on behalf of Newark airport: “The Port Authority has invested billions to modernize Newark Liberty, but those improvements depend on a fully staffed and modern federal air traffic system.
“We continue to urge the FAA to address ongoing staffing shortages and accelerate long-overdue technology upgrades that continue to cause delays in the nation’s busiest air corridor,” the spokesperson said.
