Following Disastrous And Dangerous Outages, Leader Schumer Demands Secretary Duffy Put Newark First In Line To Receive Critically Needed Fixes And Tech So Air Traffic Can Function As It Should—Safely; The Current Situation Is Unacceptable And A Fix Cannot Wait

New York, N.Y. - Today, Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on Secretary Duffy to immediately fix the situation at Newark Airport, which could be improved quickly, including swapping old tech responsible for ongoing and dangerous ATC blackouts with tech available to FAA from within agency. 

With radar screen going black—again—for Air Traffic Controllers at Newark Airport—a stretch of chaos that has gone on far too long—Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded that U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put Newark first in line to receive critically-needed fixes that were loosely detailed in his recent announcement to overhaul all of FAA Air Traffic Control.

“When people hear about radar screens just going dark, traffic controllers who cannot talk to planes, technology that is seemingly working no better than tin cans, they do not think this is a story about the Trump administration’s FAA, but that is what is so scary: this story is real and this story is dangerous. This situation is also unacceptable,” said Leader Schumer. “I have communicated this past week with the FAA, and I feel no better today than a week ago about the state of aviation safety since this administration took the controls at FAA. As I said last week, Newark is a harbinger. If this dangerous situation can happen in the metro region, imagine what might happen in places where there is less scrutiny. This really makes you worry.”

The ground stop this morning meant flights heading to Newark could not take off and lasted for about 45 minutes, according to FAA air traffic advisories and media reports. There has 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, reports say.

The Trump administration proposed an overhaul of the U.S. air traffic control system last Thursday 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, but Schumer, today, said this timeline must move faster and that Newark must be first in line. Schumer also said the plan came with no cost.

According to ABC, radar screens at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport went black early Friday morning. The outage happened at 3:55 a.m. and lasted about 90 seconds, ABC and the Federal Aviation Administration said. Air traffic controllers could be heard telling a FedEx plane that their screens went dark and then asked them to tell their company to put pressure on to get the problem fixed, ABC reported. In another transmission, a controller told a private jet arriving from Cyprus that they just had a radar outage and to stay at or above 3,000 feet in case they can't get in touch during their descent.

It was the third time in two weeks that radars failed at the facility in Philadelphia where controllers manage the airspace in and around Newark. In the last several days, outages at Newark caused ATC computer screens to go dark for roughly 60 to 90 seconds and prevented controllers from talking to aircraft during that time, according to ABC. As a result, the FAA briefly halted all departures to the airport.

Schumer, today, said Secretary Duffy must put Newark first in line for fixes he said would be made to the nation’s ATC systems. Schumer, today, gave specific details about the work that needs to be done, including installing a DIRECT fiber-optic telco line between Newark Airport and Philadelphia terminal radar approach control center, no more indirect runaround. Schumer said the current crisis is due to old technology and an indirect connection. Schumer has called for a modernized, direct connection and new computers to analyze and display transmitted data.

Newark Airport is the 13th busiest in America and 23rd busiest in the world. The airport serves nearly 50 million customers a year, both domestic and international. It is a major East Coast hub and a gateway to Europe, South America, and Asia for much of the country. It is central to New York’s role in the global economy and along the Northeast Corridor, which accounts for 20% of America’s GDP.

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