The Federal Aviation Administration issued an interim order Tuesday limiting the number of incoming and departing flights at Newark Liberty International Airport, which has faced national scrutiny due to critical outages caused by staffing shortages and decades-old infrastructure.
The FAA announced that until construction on a new runway is completed, arrivals and departures will be capped at 28 each per hour. The number marks a 27% decrease from the total of 77 arriving and departing flights previously allowed per hour by the FAA. The changes come after airline leaders met with the FAA last week to discuss lowering the number of flights at Newark in an effort to address delays spurred by the outages.
“Our goal is to relieve the substantial inconvenience to the traveling public from excessive flight delays due to construction, staffing challenges, and recent equipment issues, which magnify as they spread through the National Airspace System,” acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau said in a statement.
Daily runway construction is set to be completed by June 15 but will continue on Saturdays until the end of the year, per the FAA. Outside of the construction period, 34 arrivals and departures will be allowed per hour until Oct. 25.
The updated guidance on permitted arriving and departing flights comes just days ahead of Memorial Day weekend, among the busiest travel periods of the year.
The FAA’s latest action on Newark, one of the busiest airports in the country, comes the same day it experienced its fourth air traffic communication outage in three weeks.
Tuesday morning, a brief radio frequency outage affected the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control facility that manages Newark’s air traffic. Similar outages also left Philadelphia air traffic controllers unable to see or communicate with planes around Newark on April 28 and May 9. A third incident occurred on May 11, prompting the FAA to order a 45-minute ground stop.
Kenneth Solosky, a retired chief pilot for both the Newark Police Department and the New York City Police Department, spoke to News 12 about the problems faced by pilots flying into Newark this week.
“It’s some tense moments,” Solosky said. “If I’m on final approach into Newark airport, I’m expecting that landing clearance to be transmitted at any time, and it never comes. At times, a lot of decisions need to be made in a short amount of time. ‘Do I continue? Do I land? Do I go around?’ A lot of decisions have to be made by a lot of people because the final can be occupied by 10, 15, 20 aircraft inbound for a particular airport.”
The FAA has blamed the failures in large part on severely outdated technology and equipment that have proved unable to handle the burden at heavy-traffic airports.
Some of the systems are so old that airlines have resorted to looking on eBay or utilizing 3D printing to find replacements for worn-out parts, according to officials.
“We do try to buy replacement parts on eBay for this really old equipment,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing earlier this month. “Sometimes, we can’t even buy it on eBay, so we’re trying to use 3D printing to craft replacement parts for the system that we use.”
Duffy unveiled a comprehensive plan in May to overhaul the country’s air system and address safety concerns. His eight-page proposal, which would cost tens of billions to implement, includes installing advanced fiber, wireless, and satellite systems; updating hardware and software across facilities; replacing 618 aging radars; and constructing six new control centers along with modernized towers.
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Duffy has said he anticipates the problems at Newark’s airport to occur at other airports across the country, saying he was “concerned about the whole airspace.” He hopes to extend the retirement age for all air traffic controllers to help address problems, increasing the mandatory age from 56 to 61, and giving them a 20% upfront bonus to stay on the job.
“We are the safest airspace for sure, and traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation, which is why I take it,” the transportation secretary said on May 11. “But again, that doesn’t mean you don’t look over the horizon and say, ‘Hey, if there is a major outage, could that be a risk to life?’ Of course, it could be, which is why we fix it.”
