The skies over Newark Liberty International Airport Monday have been a congested mess, continuing last week’s widespread cancellations and delays.
A persistent shortage of air traffic controllers to guide planes paired with reduced visibility thanks to thick fog are delaying arriving flights Monday by an average of four hours. Departures are seeing up to a half-an-hour delay due to a backup of flights on the airport’s two runways — a third is out of commission until mid-June for repaving. As of noon, airlines canceled more than 150 flights and are grappling with delays to over 250 additional flights at Newark airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The disruptions, which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says it expects to continue throughout the day, highlight a nationwide lack of air traffic controllers and the impact those staff shortages can have on fliers and airlines. The persistent issues prompted Chicago-based United Airlines, the largest carrier at Newark airport, on Friday to cut 35 upcoming round-trip flights per day out of the roughly 328 round-trip flights United runs at the airport. The exact flights that were cut are unclear, but the airline flies to 76 U.S. cities and 81 international destinations.
Here’s what to know if you’re flying out of or into Newark airport anytime soon.
What’s going on with air traffic controllers?
The Federal Aviation Administration is more than 3,000 air traffic controllers short of what the agency says would be adequate staffing to oversee flights at airports across the country this year. The issue is especially dire at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control center in Pennsylvania, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark.
Aviation officials shifted management of Newark’s airspace from New York to Philadelphia last summer. The move required 24 traffic controllers to relocate to Philadelphia and was intended to ease air traffic delays in the New York area. But over the past year the FAA has pointed to radar and telecommunications equipment outages and staff shortages at the Philadelphia facility as fueling delays at Newark airport.
Scott Kirby, chief executive of United Airlines, described the Philadelphia center in a Friday letter to customers as “chronically understaffed for years” and said that the issue came to a head last week, when more than 20% of the air traffic controllers responsible for Newark that week “walked off the job” supposedly in protest of the challenging work conditions.
Why is one runway closed?
To complicate matters, the Port Authority is in the midst of a $121 million project to repave the airport’s busiest runway for departures. On April 15 crews began resurfacing the runway and upgrading its lighting and signage — work that hasn’t been done since 2014 and is expected to last through mid-June.
Port Authority officials say the agency prepared for the project by planning fewer flights during this period. But high winds and inclement weather have in some cases forced the airport to rely on just one runway for its more than 1,000 daily flights, which can cause extensive delays because arrivals and departures must use the same runway.
How long will the disruptions last?
The Port Authority, which operates the airport, called on the FAA in a statement Monday to address staff shortages and ramp up overdue technology upgrades that are causing delays in the nation’s busiest air corridor. The FAA, for its part, late last week unveiled a package of incentives aimed at bolstering the ranks of air traffic controllers, including bonuses for new hires and perks to keep those near retirement on the job. The agency has also boosted pay for new controllers and sought to speed up the process for getting new recruits into training. But onboarding thousands of new controllers will take time.
Meanwhile, persistent delays could be the new normal at Newark for weeks, if not months. In his letter, United CEO Kirby described the situation bluntly: “Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.” Kirby added that United reducing its daily round-trip flights at Newark airport is a Band-Aid “since there is no way to resolve the near-term structural FAA staffing issues.”
