By G. Dunkel
May 14, 2025
Ninety seconds of a blank screen and a dead radio were enough for anger and anxiety to sink their claws deep into the psyche of air traffic controllers at Newark Liberty International Airport April 28. So deep that five controllers had to take a 45-day “trauma leave,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy contradicted the controllers, claiming contact was lost just for 30 seconds. A retired controller told CNN that to get the appropriate feel, you should imagine yourself driving on an interstate highway in heavy traffic with your eyes blindfolded for a minute and then figuring out what to do when the blindfold was lifted.
During the pause in contact, only four controllers were guiding 15 to 20 planes — each with potentially hundreds of passengers — in a situation where FAA rules required 10 controllers.
All the approaches to Newark are over land. Some approaches to the two other major New York city airports, LaGuardia and JFK, have approaches over water. Crashes of planes following these paths are less likely to impact people living under the flight paths.
In the 1950s and 1960s crashes of planes taking off or landing at Newark Airport wiped out whole neighborhoods in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a city abutting the airport. Even though Newark had one of the first Airway Traffic Control Stations, along with Cleveland and Chicago, airport safety was weak there until the 1970s.
While Newark is far from the busiest U.S. airport, the control station still handled 48 million passengers in 2024 and over 440,000 flights, according to the FAA, and with staffing at 65% of the desired level. Almost all major U.S. airports are understaffed, with many controllers working 10 hours a day, six days a week.
After the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization’s (PATCO) strike in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 controllers and decertified the union, staffing never reached its pre-1981 levels. That is true even though the FAA has hired hundreds of controllers. (See the National Air Traffic Controllers Association webpage. NATCA represents more than 15,000 aviation safety professionals. NATCA history.pdf)
Besides suffering understaffing, which will take years to ameliorate, Newark airport’s technology and that of other sites is woefully out of date. According to Duffy, controllers still use floppy disks — 1990s technology — to load their computers, which are maintained by spare parts purchased on eBay.
Their screens are connected to the radar system using copper wiring, which has technical limitations. The wiring is getting a major portion of the blame for the April 28 freeze.
There have been over 1,000 flight cancellations or significant delays (more than two hours) at Newark since April 28 and at least three ground stops, under which the FAA prohibits planes taking off or landing.
By squeezing the air traffic controllers since the 1981 PATCO strike and not investing in the necessary technology, the FAA and the private airline industry have left U.S. air transportation unstable and prone to collapse.
Since it takes years to fully train an air traffic controller and to install new technology, the only thing Secretary Duffy offers is to limit the number of planes Newark handles — and blame Joe Biden for the errors.
Association of Flight Attendants – CWA International President Sara Nelson made this comment on air traffic disruptions at Newark airport: “We support every effort to secure the funding necessary to staff up and provide the resources that are a decade overdue for our air traffic controllers to be able to do their jobs.
“We call on all airlines operating out of Newark to cut planned flights at an equal percentage across airlines in order to support this work, aviation safety and our jobs. Working together we can solve the problem faster and keep everyone safe.”
