The FAA has announced a series of steps it will take to resolve air traffic control (ATC) system failures impacting Newark Liberty Airport.
“This includes accelerating technological and logistical improvements and increasing air traffic controller staffing,” the agency said.
The failures, combined with Newark runway construction and ATC staffing shortages, have led air traffic control to repeatedly slow Newark arrivals since the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (Tracon) facility, which has managed Newark air traffic since last summer, lost radar and radio communications with aircraft for 90 seconds on April 28.
That incident so rattled controllers working that shift that four have taken short-term trauma leave, the Wall Street Journal reported. Controllers’ radios went out again for a brief time later in the week.
Operational challenges continued at the airport on May 7, though to a lesser extent than some recent days. Shortly after 4 p.m. local time, 42 Newark departures had been canceled along with 46 arrivals, according to FlightAware. Both numbers are the highest for the day among U.S. airports.
In a May 7 statement, the FAA laid out the steps it is taking to resolve the Newark ATC technology issues. The agency explained that the system that processes radar data for Newark is based in New York, and telecommunications lines feed that data to the Philadelphia Tracon.
Immediate steps to be taken include adding three high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the New York and Philadelphia facilities to improve speed and reliability; replacing copper telecommunications connections with updated fiberoptic technology; and deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia facility that will provide redundancy during the switch to a more reliable fiberoptic network.
The FAA also said it will establish a new radar data processing facility in Philadelphia so that data will no longer have to be transmitted from the New York processing hub.
Boosting staffing will also be key, though it might not be a quick fix. The FAA said the Philadelphia Tracon has 22 fully certified controllers and 21 controllers and supervisors in training, including 10 trainees who are receiving on-the-job training.
“We have a healthy pipeline with training classes filled through July 2026,” the agency said, but it did not lay out plans for any immediate Philadelphia additions.
By
By
By
