FAA Steps In To Fix Newark Airport’s Delays, Air-Traffic Controller Shortages

Ongoing runway construction and air-traffic control staffing shortages have caused massive problems at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport. Now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is implementing changes.

One of the three major airports in the New York City metropolitan area, Newark Liberty has been a mess of late, with Runway 4L-22R undergoing a 60-day continuous “rehabilitation” that won’t conclude until June 15. United Airlines (UAL) CEO Scott Kirby was so fed up that he wrote to customers last Friday that the carrier was “unilaterally cancelling 35 roundtrip flights per day from our Newark schedule.” Newark Liberty is one of United’s hubs “and takes our customers to 76 different U.S. cities and 81 international destinations,” Kirby added.

FAA ‘Slowing Arrivals and Departures’ at Newark Liberty in Response

According to FlightAware data, as of 4:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, 42 flights were canceled and 30 delayed originating from Newark Liberty, and 46 were canceled and 56 delayed destined for the airport. On its X account Wednesday, the FAA said that it “has been slowing arrivals and departures at [EWR] due to runway construction at Newark and staffing and technology issues at Philadelphia TRACON, which guides aircraft in and out of the airport.”

The FAA also said it was replacing copper telecommunications connections with updated fiber-optic technology with greater bandwidth and speed, and “increasing controller staffing.”

That latter point may provide some comfort to Kirby, who wrote in his note to United customers that “over 20% of the FAA controllers for EWR walked off the job” following multiple technology failures. Bloomberg reported Monday that air-traffic controllers for the airport “lost radar and radio communication for more than a minute” on April 28, and the FAA posted on X that some controllers had “taken time off to recover from the stress of multiple recent outages.”

The news comes weeks before the busy summer travel season kicks off in earnest. Last year, nearly 3 million people passed through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. The TSA is encouraging passengers to ensure they have REAL IDs to avoid delays at airports.