The FAA has throttled traffic into Newark Liberty International Airport to 28 flights per hour after communications problems led to a messy ground stop just before noon on Thursday. The agency lifted the ground stop in the early afternoon, but hundreds of flights were affected by delays that lasted up to three hours. The FAA had already cut flight frequency from 42 to 34 arrivals per hour. The second reduction will be in effect at least until Aug. 29, just as the Labor Day traffic starts to build. The problems caused by the tech issues at Newark were compounded by weather-related delays at Dallas and Chicago, and by late Thursday more than 700 flights had been delayed.
Newark has been particularly troublesome in the past six months with numerous equipment failures leading to traffic interruptions, and the situation has been a key trigger in the agency’s efforts to modernize the system as a whole in a hurry. Congress earmarked $12.5 billion for ATC modernization in the Big Beautiful Bill passed in July, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said at least $31 billion more will be needed. This is an evolving situation and this story will be updated through the day.
Awesome. Appreciate the “instant update”.
https://tenor.com/view/just-kidding-airplane-johnny-just-messin-just-playin-gif-17014052
The brilliant Stephen Stucker was another huge talent lost to the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s. RIP.
Sean Duffy is a fool if he thinks Newark will be fixed by 2028 as he claimed. Moving at the speed of government, it’ll take ten years or more because the problems are many and run to the very core of long-neglected systems. Shame on the FAA for letting it come to this.
Was flying out that way that day.
ATC was reporting a frequency outage and surrounding controllers were making due.
Not shocked to read this after. Feels like the character in the tower in “Airplane” the comedy, pulled the plug at plug at EWR remote Ttacon, yet again.
No, not, “just kidding”…
I find it interesting that the Trump administration, in its “Big Beautiful Bill”, allocated over $170 BILLION dollars to Immigration and Customs (ICE) to round up and deport illegal aliens, but only parceled out a measly $12.5 billion to modernize the air traffic system that oversees the safety of more than 100 million Americans every year as they travel by air. Kind of makes you wonder where their priorities really lie.
If there are no more headline type issues for a while, ATC will once again fall by the wayside. Same old….