Three days of meetings to discuss reducing the number of flights at Newark Liberty International Airport concluded Friday in the wake of critical air traffic control problems around the metro New York hub and other US airports.
The “delay reduction meeting,” called by the Federal Aviation Administration, started Wednesday and ended with airlines agreeing to fly fewer as many flights into busy Newark airport to minimize cancellations and delays.
The FAA is proposing a maximum arrival rate of 28 aircraft an hour until the airport completes construction on its runway, with daily work expected to end June 15 and continue on Saturdays until the end of the year.
After the construction period, the FAA said the maximum arrival rate would be 34 aircraft an hour until October 25. A final determination on arrival rates is expected at the end of May.
“The FAA has brought in together all of the airlines who serve Newark to have a conversation about how there can be a delayed reduction,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a congressional hearing Wednesday. “So, if you book your flight, that flight is going to fly. You don’t have people at the airport for two, four, six hours, then a flight canceled.”
United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air all attended the meeting. Airlines are required to follow specific procedures during the sessions to ensure compliance with antitrust regulations.
The broader air traffic control meltdown across the US has involved communication losses, near misses, small airplane crashes and the tragic midair collision in January near Washington, DC, that killed 67 people.
With the flying public’s anxieties already raised, the recent problems in the federal government’s trusted air travel system has forced the Department of Transportation to streamline a new air traffic control plan that aims to mend aging infrastructure and update decades-old technology.
The ongoing meeting about Newark airport’s traffic comes after more than two weeks of delays and cancellations prompted by air traffic control staffing shortages at a Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, facility that handles flights headed to or from the Newark airport, plus runway construction and congestion.
Thirty-eight certified professional controllers are needed to operate the facility that handles Newark traffic, yet only 24 of the positions – 63% – are currently filled, the FAA notes in the meeting announcement. Sixteen of those controllers are due to return to a New York FAA facility next year.
Additionally, five controllers took a 45-day trauma leave after an outage on April 28 caused their radar screens to go blank for 90 seconds and their radios to go out for 30 seconds during the busy afternoon.
The outage happened when a primary telecommunications line failed and a backup line did not kick in, FAA Deputy Chief Operating Officer Franklin McIntosh testified Wednesday at a Senate hearing.
“That redundant line is supposed to assume that load, and it’s supposed to be instantaneous,” he said. “When we lost that first line, the second line did not kick in like it was designed to do.”
The data lines were installed after the facility moved from New York to Philadelphia in July, but it is not unique to Newark, McIntosh said. “We have this system across the United States feeding radar data like this, where we have a line in a redundant line, and we haven’t had a failure like this degree in my memory,” he said.
An FAA task force, including telecommunication providers Crown Castle and Verizon, met this week with the aim of installing a third line by this summer.
The Department of Transportation has promised additional upgrades to this facility as well as the entire air traffic control system in the months and years ahead.
The FAA reiterated Friday its intentions to add three new high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the NY-based STARS, the standard terminal automation replacement system, which tracks aircraft using FAA data, and the Philadelphia TRACON. It will also replace copper telecommunications connections, update fiber-optic technology and increase controller staffing.
At the House Appropriations Committee hearing, Duffy outlined nearly $27 billion in discretionary spending the department is requesting for the next fiscal year, including more than $1 billion increase to help modernize the air traffic control system.
McIntosh acknowledged staffing is tight in the TRACON facility with just three controllers working all Newark arrivals and departures over one hour Monday night.
“I’m trying to understand, why is it that we’re now down from seven, which is basically what you think you need, down to three?” asked Sen. Maria Cantwell, ranking member of the committee.
“We did lose some controllers in that area due to either some sick leave that was unscheduled or some other leave that was not scheduled,” McIntosh responded. “When those things happen… we’ll put in the appropriate traffic management initiatives to keep the flying public safe and make sure that we put controllers in the position to be successful.”
Newark ‘clearly is unable to handle’ flight schedule, FAA says
Since April 15, traffic management initiatives at Newark have included ground stops and ground delays, which keep planes heading to Newark from taking off.
“When we have a staffing shortage and we cannot open enough positions, we put in traffic management initiatives to slow the aircraft down,” McIntosh said. “That’s exactly what we did that night at Philadelphia area C, we put in a ground delay program to keep traffic manageable.”
Since runway construction at Newark started April 15, the airport saw an average of 34 cancellations per day and “consistently high” delayed arrivals, with an average delay time of 137 minutes during the 5 p.m. hour each evening.
“EWR is unacceptably congested airport due to current circumstances,” the FAA said, referring to Newark’s airport code, in the delay reduction meeting notice. “The airport clearly is unable to handle the current level of scheduled operations.”
Each airline will be asked to offer “specific flight reductions or schedule modifications” not contingent on what other airlines do, the notice said. The FAA will then consider an order that could limit schedules at the airport.
Chicago-based United Airlines, which operates a hub at Newark, recently called for assigned “slots” at the airport, which would require government approval before any flights could be scheduled.
Alongside the FAA’s plans for the proposed aircraft arrival rates, international air operations will be managed through a different process, according to a meeting notice the FAA published ahead of Wednesday.
Correction: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong last name for FAA Deputy Chief Operating Officer Franklin McIntosh.