More technical problems at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. For the second time in the space of two weeks, staff at the hub again lost contact with aircraft under its control on Friday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Philadelphia facility’s radar that directs aircraft in and out of Newark Airport went off for 90 seconds. For more than a minute, therefore, flight controllers were unable to communicate with aircrew.
The incident in question is almost identical to the one of last April 28, when Newark officials lost contact with aircraft for about 30 seconds.
That first radar failure caused hundreds of flights at the New Jersey hub to be canceled or delayed over the past two weeks after the FAA decided to “ease” airport traffic for safety reasons.
An average of 34 flight cancellations per day have occurred at Newark since mid-April, and the FAA said the number of delays increases throughout the day. The average duration of delays is between 85 and 137 minutes.
The federal agency has scheduled a formal meeting for next week with all airlines flying out of Newark, to discuss the cuts it plans to make at the hub.
Recently, air traffic control operations have come under constant criticism. Days ago, United Airlines announced that it would cancel 35 flights a day from Newark because the airport “cannot handle the number of aircraft scheduled.” The company also explained that the problems were “exacerbated” by the fact that more than 20 percent of FAA controllers “walked off the job.”
On Friday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the latest technical problem that occurred at the hub was virtually identical to the one last April. At the time, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said: “The primary communication line went down, the backup line didn’t fire, and so for 30 seconds we lost contact with air traffic. Now were planes going to crash? No. They have communication devices. … But it’s a sign that we have a frail system in place, and it has to be fixed.”
To remedy the problem, the DOT secretary this week announced a multibillion-dollar plan to replace the nation’s old air traffic control system. The project is designed to prevent problems like those that occurred and equip air traffic controllers with modern, sophisticated technology. More than 4,600 new high-speed connections will be installed and 618 radars will be replaced across the country.
Officials came up with the plan in question after a tragic accident between an airliner and an Army helicopter occurred last January near the Washington DC airport. The collision between the two aircraft resulted in the deaths of as many as 67 people.
