Nearly 80 flights were canceled and over 40 more delayed Sunday at Newark Liberty International Airport after another critical equipment failure disrupted operations at one of the busiest air traffic hubs in the New York City area.
The Federal Aviation Administration imposed a 45-minute ground stop Sunday morning in response to the outage at Newark’s air traffic control center, officials confirmed to WABC.
It marked the second major incident in three days. A radar glitch early Friday had already paralyzed flight traffic, prompting temporary closure of the airport.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the total volume of flights in and out of Newark will be scaled back “for the next several weeks” as the FAA contends with a severe shortage of air traffic controllers. “We want to have a number of flights that if you book your flight, you know it’s going to fly, right?” Duffy said during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.
United Airlines, which handles about 75 percent of the airport’s traffic, is expected to be heavily affected. Duffy added that a meeting involving all carriers operating out of Newark is set for this week to coordinate a revised flight schedule.
The latest disruption underscores persistent operational fragility at the New Jersey airport, coming as the busy summer travel season approaches. No timeline was given for resolving the technical faults that triggered the weekend delays.
