Newark’s air traffic outages were just the tip of the iceberg

On June 2, the American transport secretary Sean Duffy went to Newark Liberty International Airport to celebrate the reopening of the 4L-22R track. It was unusual: few track openings are glamorous enough to justify a visit to the CEO of the airport, not to mention a secretary of the cabinet. But as we pointed out last month, some airports came to symbolize the mismanagement of the USDOT of the air traffic control system as much as Newark.

The ceremony and the press conference had to transform Newark into a different symbol – one of progress and action. In his speech, Duffy positioned Newark’s problems as solvent, and the people on stage – who included the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Chris Rocheleau, the CEO of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, and several other dignitaries – as soluers of problems.

Together, they had obtained union work to rebuild a track in 47 days instead of 60; They had convinced Verizon to speed up a new fiber optic cable; They had identified and corrected the “problem in the system” which left Newark air controllers blind and unable to speak to pilots for several terrifying minutes.

Due to this whirlwind of activity, Rocheleau expected Newark to be able to increase its flight volume by 25%, or nearly 12 additional flights per hour.

Or, as Kirby said, “it’s a turning point if seminal not only in the long term but in the long term of Newark.”

In two days, the three men turned out to be wrong. On the evening of June 4, a shortage of air traffic controllers forced Newark to publish a ground stop, delaying more than 100 flights for several hours. Another period related to staff occurred four days later. Optimism alone cannot solve infrastructure problems that have been decades.

Especially when they are much more widespread than most people don’t think so. In addition to the three days of crisis in Newark – April 28, May 1 and May 9 – there were at least a dozen cases where equipment or staff problems have considerably affected operations in air traffic control centers across the country this year.

The most serious incidents occurred in the Kansas City air traffic control facilities in January, Oakland in February and Denver in May. Each time, the controllers could not see or communicate with the pilots after the failures of the radar and the radio. Denver’s failure only lasted 90 seconds, but the others persisted for more than an hour. Everyone has led to general delays and cancellations.

In March, at Baltimore Thurgood Marshall (BWI) airport, an electric fire blamed on “overloaded aging equipment” interrupted operations for more than two hours, which causes 50 flight cancellations and more than 150 delays.

And twice this year, the FAA Air Missions (NOTAM) System (Note) – a real -time database of each flying danger and traffic advice which covers all of the American airspace – has dropped for several hours at a time, resulting in more than 1,300 delays and cancellations.

It is not just technology that causes problems. The FAA is short by more than 3,000 air traffic controllers nationally. This shortage has forced several air traffic control installations to issue “endowment triggers”, reducing the number of flights in their airspace to accommodate reduced controller levels. Endowment triggers have twice occurred by air traffic traffic control facilities responsible for Austin, New York regional airports, and once each in Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami this year.

Even this may not present the complete image of the depth and extent of the crisis of the air traffic control system. This list includes only incidents that have been reported by local media, or which can be recovered from the FAA Air Traffic Consultative Database (ATCCC) – a system that purges most of the opinions after two weeks.

To put this in perspective, there have been 162 days in 2025 so far. At least 16 of these days – almost one in 10 – a large part of the air traffic system failed somewhere in America.

A recent government report of the Government of responsibility for September 2024 revealed that 90% of the critical infrastructure of control of the country’s air traffic were due or passed for a “technological refreshment”. Almost half of the 138 systems interviewed were “considered unsustainable” or “potentially unbearable” due to financing deficits, insufficient maintenance expertise or even a lack of spare parts. (For example, a FAA review in 2023 revealed that the systems following air and ground aircraft use more than 700 beacons that are over 20 years old and whose manufacturers no longer make spare parts.)

The FAA has been aware of this problem for decades. In 2003, the agency began developing an “next generation” air traffic control system. This Nextgen system would replace the current infrastructure which had been “developed in the 1940s and 1950s … and was no longer able to manage the increase in air traffic” and would be delivered by 2025.

But the delivery year has arrived and NextGen still exists mainly on paper. The agency has not yet achieved its minimum objective of launching all the main Nextgen systems in a single major airport by 2025, not to mention the “complete implementation” which it initially promised by the end of the year. Some critical systems may not be put online before 2030, including replacing the air communication system that failed in Newark, Denver and elsewhere.

Air traffic controllers are always invited to maintain the same levels of safety despite the use of the equipment that is obsolete. But they are not supported either. The vast majority of air traffic control centers are lower than target endowment levels. More than half do not even respond to an “FAA standard” of 85% of target personnel levels. To compensate, controllers are often required to work six days a week, 10 hours a day. An air traffic controller on Reddit called for this “worse moment to be an American ATC since 1981” – the year when the air controllers were on strike for better wages, and President Ronald Reagan responded by pulling more than 11,000 of them.

On May 8, Secretary Duffy unveiled a “brand new air traffic control system”, an “eight -page framework to reinvest in the national airspace system”. Although the ambition is there, the details are definitely not. Intraussable problems will require several years of sustained funding, political support and appropriate management and administration. This combination of factors has not existed since at least in the early 2000s, if it never did.

Thus, while Secretary Duffy is right to recognize the work that was done to solve the problems in Newark and throughout the country, there is still a long way to go – and no miracle solution which can repair two decades of negligence.