Fliers are dealing with widespread cancellations and delays at Newark Liberty International Airport Friday, as the terminal grapples with a shortage of air traffic controllers, equipment issues and repair work on a runway that’s led to bottlenecks for flights.
Staff shortages at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control center in Pennsylvania, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark airport, on Friday delayed some arriving flights by more than two hours, airport officials said as of midday. So far today, airlines have canceled 18 flights and delayed another 268, according to the aviation analytics firm Flight Aware.
The travel headaches are the latest in a string of frustrating delays this week for fliers passing through Newark airport. On Thursday, airlines canceled 203 flights and delayed another 501 due largely to a shortage of air controllers and continued issues with telecommunication and radar equipment, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Construction at the airport is also contributing to delays. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is in the midst of a $121 million rehabilitation project on one of the airport’s three runways, which “may affect flight schedules,” the agency said Friday. The 11,000-foot long and 150-foot wide runway is typically the busiest at the airport for departing flights.
Work to repave the runway and upgrade its lighting and signage began on April 15 and is expected to last through mid-June. In the meantime, gusty winds or reduced visibility at the airport has at times temporarily limited air traffic to just one runaway.
Severe thunderstorms elsewhere have also forced airport officials to delay flights to Dallas set to depart from Newark this afternoon by up to two hours.
To mitigate the staff shortages, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday unveiled a package of incentives aimed at bolstering the number of air traffic controllers in the system, including bonuses for new hires and incentives to keep those closer to retirement on the job for a few more years.
The package builds on a plan unveiled by the Trump administration in February that boosted pay for new air traffic controllers and sought to speed up the process of getting new hires trained. The FAA employs roughly 13,800 air traffic controllers at over 300 facilities, but it is still more than 3,000 short of the number of workers the agency said it needs to be fully staffed.
“We’re hoping in three to four years we can get to full staffing, not 20 years,” Duffy said at a Thursday news conference. “How do you make up the gap? We can’t snap our fingers to make up the numbers.”
