A radar and communication outage at Newark Liberty International Airport left air traffic controllers blind and deaf for a harrowing minute and a half, according to a source who spoke with The New York Post. The cause was reportedly a burnt copper wire that shorted out a critical system.
The breakdown, which occurred on April 28, incapacitated the Federal Aviation Administration’s control capabilities and has since led several air traffic controllers at the Philadelphia operations center to take leave due to psychological distress, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
United Airlines has placed the blame for widespread delays at Newark — the second most active airport in the New York metro area — on the FAA, citing that roughly 20% of controllers “walked off the job” after the incident. The airline says this staffing gap forced them to cancel dozens of flights daily.
“Air traffic controllers in Area C of the Philadelphia TRACON (PHL), who are responsible for separating and sequencing aircraft in and out of Newark Airport (EWR), temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear, or talk to them,” a NATCA spokesperson explained in a statement.
Those affected by the situation took time off under the Federal Employees Compensation Act, which provides support for federal workers who suffer physical or emotional trauma due to work-related incidents.
Since the start of the crisis last Friday, Newark Liberty has seen over 400 flight cancellations and nearly 2,000 delayed departures and arrivals.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded a federal probe into the incident, noting the scale of the disruption at an airport that handled 49 million passengers last year.
“The technology is old and must be updated. One of the things that happened at Newark is a copper wire burnt. Why are we using copper wire in 2025? Have they heard of fiber?” Schumer remarked.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also criticized the FAA’s outdated technology as a key reason for the chaos.
“We use floppy disks. We use copper wires,” he said. “The system that we’re using is not effective to control the traffic that we have in the airspace today.”
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby addressed the airline’s customers in a letter, stating that the relocation of Newark’s control operations to Philadelphia last summer was intended to alleviate traffic congestion at other nearby airports, but staffing issues have plagued the facility for years. He also identified the technical malfunction as the trigger for the cascading problems.
Kirby announced that United would be trimming its Newark schedule by 35 roundtrip flights per day and reiterated the claim that 20% of the airport’s controllers had “walked off the job” following the incident. That claim, however, was strongly denied by the controllers’ union.
{Matzav.com}