Newar Liberty International Airport has faced a lot of disruption in recent weeks. Technology halts in busy hubs, shortages of air traffic controllers and runway construction have delayed many cancelled flights.
The Federal Aviation Administration says it is trying to improve the situation, including software and hardware upgrades. On Wednesday, I met with airline executives to discuss how to make things go smoothly by reducing the number of flights at airports at certain times.
During a Senate hearing on aviation safety on Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said the agency had “a multi-year failure that couldn't meet technology and staffing needs.”
What is happening with staffing?
Air traffic control facilities across the country have not had enough controllers for many years, as a result of employee sales, strict budgets, long training times and other factors.
There are only 22 certified controllers employed to serve Newark. This is shy about a third of the 38 staffing goals, so five supervisors and nearly 20 controllers and supervisors are training. Ten trainees can do some kind of work without at least extra supervision, the agency said this week.
Tight personnel can disrupt operations in Newark. For example, for a few hours on Monday, limited staffing forced the FAA to prevent flights from leaving other airports heading to Newark. These delays averaged 1 hour and 40 minutes, lasting nearly seven hours. In some evenings, only three air traffic controllers were working when staff goal was 14.
Air traffic controllers in Newark moved from their Long Island offices to Philadelphia last summer. There, the controller still led the plane to other New York airports. The hope was that moving Newark operations to more affordable areas could make it easier for agents to recruit controllers.
However, 16 controllers working on Newark flights are expected to return to Long Island in July 2026. Alternatives are in place and training classes will be filled up until next summer, the FAA said Tuesday. Due to the complex nature of the work, it can take more than a year to train controllers at other facilities to handle traffic in Newark, one of North America's busiest airports.
What's going on with the construction of the runway?
Since April 15, one of Newark's three runways has been closed for construction. According to delays in the arrival of the FAA, peaks in busy afternoons and evenings resulted in one to four flight cancellations per hour. Construction will continue until June 15th and is scheduled to resume on the weekend from September until the end of the year.
At the same time, Philadelphia's air traffic control facility had two short periods, but it became impossible to find the planes being taught by the controller when it came to radar shutdowns. The first of these stops rattles off by people on vacation to recover from that stress. The telecommunications line failed, causing both outages. The backup line was in place, but the software on that line also failed, overwhelming the backup, officials said this week.
Franklin McIntosh, the FAA's deputy chief operating officer, told the senators at a hearing Wednesday.
What does the FAA do?
On Friday, the FAA installed software upgrades that it said would help prevent outages. The agency is also working to add a third line of communications. And on Wednesday, agency officials and airline officials held a meeting in Washington to discuss flight restrictions at the airport.
Construction is underway, but the agency plans to limit flights to 56 per hour, split evenly between arrival and departure. This will limit operations until next month, but not so much, according to an analysis of flight schedules from aviation data company Cirium.
The limit then rises to 68 flights per hour from mid-June to late October. According to Cirium data, many summer afternoons where the number of scheduled flights can reach the 70s or low 80s, this will be significantly reduced.
United Airlines will be the most affected as it operates around 70% of its flights in Newark, one of its eight airport hubs. But if FAA restrictions help stabilize airport operations, it's worth it, United's chief commercial officer Andrew Nocera said at a company event in New York on Tuesday.
Nosera described the upper limit of 68 flights per hour as a “big result.”
“Hopefully, as we get through the summer and enter the fall, we can increase the numbers as our FAA staffing improves,” he said. “But the most important thing is to make sure you can board an aircraft when you go to Newark and that it can go.
Just a few months ago, Newark's operations were not far behind other major New York Regional Airport operations. For the 12 months ended in January, 77% of Newark departures were on time, compared to 80% at Lagardia Airport, according to federal government data. Over that period, 76% of flights arriving in Newark were on time compared to 77% in JFK and 79% in LaGuardia.
