Travel woes at Newark Airport continued Monday after a weekend featuring another radar outage, a ground stop and dozens of flight cancellations and delays.
The FAA announced Newark was operating on a ground delay program, with departures set back an average of 101 minutes across the board as of 1:45 p.m., with a maximum delay of six hours. About 80 flights had already been canceled and 129 flights have been delayed, according to FlightAware. This is part of a concerning trend, the feds and others say.
There have been an average of 34 arrival cancellations per day since mid-April at Newark, according to the FAA, with the number of delays increasing throughout the day from an average of five in the mornings to 16 by the evening. They tend to last 85 to 137 minutes on average.
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WATCH HEREThe problems have been triggered by a range of causes, from radar outages to a shortage of air traffic controllers to other issues. A day ago, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the Trump administration plans to reduce the number of flights in and out of the Newark Liberty International Airport for the “next several weeks,” as New Jersey's largest airport figures out how to best adjust to accommodate traffic needs.
Speaking on NBC's “Meet the Press,” Duffy said he will convene a meeting with all the airlines flying out of Newark this week to determine the reduction, adding that it will fluctuate, with a larger reduction coming in the afternoons when international flight arrivals make the airport busier.
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That issue emerged two days after radar at the facility in Philadelphia went black for 90 seconds at 3:55 a.m. Friday, an episode that was similar to an incident on April 28.
The FAA said in a statement last week that it slows the rate of arrivals into Newark to ensure safety when staffing or equipment issues occur. The agency noted that frequent equipment and telecommunications outages can be stressful, prompting some air traffic controllers to take time off "to recover from the stress.”
“While we cannot quickly replace them 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 May 5 statement.
The Trump administration proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the U.S. air traffic control system last week that includes six new air traffic control centers and technology and communications upgrades at all of the nation’s air traffic facilities over the next three or four years.
Duffy said Sunday that he also plans to raise the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers from 56 to 61, as he tries to navigate a shortage of about 3,000 people in that specialized position.
