Airlines and FAA to Address Delays at Newark Liberty International Airport

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will be meeting with airlines on Wednesday to discuss the recent weeks of delays at Newark Liberty International Airport. These delays have been caused by staffing and equipment issues within the air traffic control system.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the “delay reduction meeting” at the Department of Transportation. “The goal is to have a manageable number of flights land at Newark,” he stated in a news conference on Monday. “Families shouldn’t have to wait four or five hours for a flight that never takes off.”

The delays and cancellations at Newark airport have been ongoing for more than two weeks due to air traffic control staffing shortages at a Philadelphia facility responsible for flights to and from the airport, as well as runway construction and congestion.

According to the FAA, the facility needs 38 certified professional controllers to operate effectively, but only 24 of these positions are currently filled, resulting in a 63% staffing shortage. Furthermore, 16 of these controllers are scheduled to return to a New York FAA facility next year.

In addition to the staffing shortages, five controllers took a 45-day trauma leave after an outage on April 28th, causing their radar screens to go blank for 90 seconds and their radios to go out for 30 seconds during a busy afternoon.

Since runway construction began on April 15th, Newark airport has seen an average of 34 cancelations per day and consistently high