Air traffic controllers briefly lost all radar and radio contact with multiple planes approaching Newark Liberty International Airport on April 28, triggering a cascading crisis that has resulted in thousands of canceled and delayed flights over the past week.
“Approach, are you there?” a United Airlines pilot from New Orleans asked repeatedly after controllers went silent, according to audio recordings from LiveATC.net. The pilot radioed at least five times seeking clearance to land but received approximately 30 seconds of silence before controllers finally responded.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the communications failure Monday night on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” explaining that “the primary communication line went down, the backup line didn’t fire.”
“Now were planes going to crash? No. They have communication devices,” Duffy added. “But it’s a sign that we have a frail system in place, and it has to be fixed.”
The incident affected between 15 and 20 flights being controlled at the time, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24. In one recorded exchange, a controller told a pilot flying from Charleston, South Carolina: “We lost our radar so just stay on the arrival and maintain 6000 (feet).”
Following the communications breakdown, at least five FAA employees took 45 days of trauma leave under the Federal Employees Compensation Act, which provides for absences related to on-the-job injuries or trauma. This exacerbated existing staffing shortages at the facility responsible for directing Newark’s air traffic.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby claimed that over 20% of Newark’s controllers had “walked off the job” in recent weeks, though the National Air Traffic Controllers Association disputed this characterization.
“This particular air traffic control facility has been chronically understaffed for years and without these controllers, it’s now clear — and the FAA tells us — that Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead,” Kirby said.
The aftermath has been devastating for travelers. On Thursday alone, more than 500 flights in and out of Newark were delayed and at least 200 others were canceled. The disruptions continued through the weekend, with 145 flights delayed and 76 canceled by Monday afternoon.
As of Tuesday morning, flights arriving at Newark were experiencing average delays of 2 hours and 40 minutes, according to the FAA. The agency has imposed ground delays for inbound flights and expects the disruptions to continue.
The controller shortage isn’t a quick fix. New air traffic control applicants must be younger than 31 years old to qualify for mandatory retirement at age 56. Additionally, controllers require extensive location-specific training and can’t simply transfer between facilities.
“While we cannot quickly replace [the controllers who have left] due to this highly specialized profession, we continue to train controllers who will eventually be assigned to this busy airspace,” the FAA said in a statement.
The incident has spotlighted the outdated technology used throughout America’s air traffic control system. Duffy described the current infrastructure as relying on “floppy disks” and “copper wires” — technology far behind what modern aviation demands.
“The technology that we are using is old. That’s what is causing the outages and delays we are seeing at Newark,” Duffy wrote on social media Friday. He promised to announce “a plan next week to build an all-new air traffic control system” with President Donald Trump’s backing, though he acknowledged the transformation might take three to four years.
New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Phil Murphy has requested immediate federal intervention, noting the FAA is short 3,000 air traffic controllers nationwide.
“As the FAA works to address the yearslong shortfalls, I urge you to prioritize the region, the busiest airspace in the nation,” Murphy wrote to Secretary Duffy.
Some aviation experts have expressed safety concerns about the stressed system. Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN he wasn’t sure he’d want to fly out of Newark for the next 10 days.
“We have a very safe system, but anytime it’s stressed like this, where you have controllers who are feeling under maximum pressure, it impacts safety – and people have a right to be concerned,” Goelz said.