BURSTThe Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) briefly slowed air traffic at Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday because a new telecommunications issue affected the Philadelphia facility that guides planes into and out of New Jersey’s largest airport.
The FAA said in a statement that the agency slowed traffic amid work to ensure “redundancies were working as designed” before normal airport operations resume, according to The Associated Press.
The disruptions come as the airport has garnered national recognition for delays as a result of staffing issues, largely among air traffic controllers, and technological challenges. The airport is also undergoing construction of its runway, worsening delays.
For 90 seconds on April 28, controllers at a Philadelphia air traffic control center, who were responsible for monitoring air traffic in and out of the Newark airport, lost radar and communications with the flights.
They were unable to “see, hear, or talk to them,” the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said, according to The New York Times.
A subsequent outage last Friday deepened a backlog of cancellations and delays at Newark, which is one of the three main New York City-area airports and one of the busiest in the nation.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday the federal government has reduced the number of flights departing from Newark in response to the latest disruptions, saying, “our mission is safety.”
Duffy during an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” sought to reassure Americans of the safety of flying through Newark, while acknowledging the need for significant changes.
“I hate delays. I hate cancellations… But I want you to get to where you’re traveling. And if that means slowing down flights into Newark, we slow them down to make sure we can do it safely,” he said.
“Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly. But we should also recognize we’re seeing — we’re seeing stress on an old network, and it’s time to fix it,” Duffy added.