Newark Liberty International Airport has faced many disruptions in recent weeks. Technology outages, air traffic controller shortages and runway construction at the busy hub have led to scores of canceled and delayed flights.
The Federal Aviation Administration says it’s trying to improve the situation, including with software and hardware upgrades. On Wednesday, it met with airline executives to discuss how to run things smoothly by reducing the number of flights at the airport in any given hour.
In a Senate hearing on aviation safety on Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said the agency had had a “multiyear failure to keep pace with technology and staffing needs.”
What’s going on with staffing?
Air traffic control facilities nationwide have not had enough controllers — the professionals who guide planes into and out of airports — for years, a result of employee turnover, tight budgets, long training times and other factors.
There are only 22 certified controllers employed to serve Newark, which is about a third shy of the staffing target of 38, according to the F.A.A. The agency also employs five supervisors and nearly two dozen controllers and supervisors in training. Ten trainees can do at least some work without extra supervision, the agency said this week.
Tight staffing has at times disrupted operations at Newark. For several hours on Monday, for example, limited staffing forced the F.A.A. to prevent flights bound for Newark from leaving other airports. Those delays averaged an hour and 40 minutes and lasted as long as nearly seven hours. For part of the evening, as few as three air traffic controllers were working when the staffing target was 14.
The air traffic controllers for Newark were moved last summer to Philadelphia from an office in Long Island, where controllers still guide planes to other New York airports. The hope was that by moving the Newark operations to a more affordable area, the agency might have an easier time recruiting controllers.
But 16 of the controllers working on Newark flights are expected to return to Long Island in July 2026. Replacements are being prepared, and training classes are filled through next summer, the F.A.A. said on Tuesday. Because of the complicated nature of the work, it can take a year or more to train controllers at other facilities to handle traffic at Newark, one of the busiest airports in North America.
What’s going on with runway construction?
Since April 15, one of Newark’s three runways has been closed for construction. That has caused between one and four flight cancellations per hour, peaking during the busy afternoons and evenings, according to the F.A.A. Arrival delays have also been common. The construction is expected to continue through June 15 and resume on weekends from September through the end of the year.
At the same time, the Philadelphia air traffic control facility has twice had brief but concerning radar outages that made it impossible for controllers to locate the planes they were guiding. The first of those outages left controllers rattled, with some taking leave to recover from that stress. Both outages were caused because a telecommunications line failed. A backup line was in place, but software for that line also failed, overwhelming the backup, officials said this week.
“I don’t believe there was a heightened significant danger to the flying public,” Franklin McIntosh, the F.A.A.’s deputy chief operating officer, told senators on Wednesday.
What is the F.A.A. doing?
On Friday, the F.A.A. installed a software upgrade that it said would help prevent outages. The agency is also working to add a third telecommunications line. And, on Wednesday, agency officials and airline officials met in Washington to discuss limiting flights at the airport.
While construction is underway, the agency plans to limit flights to 56 per hour, split evenly between arrivals and departures. That will restrict operations through next month, but not significantly, according to a New York Times analysis of flight schedules from Cirium, an aviation data firm.
The limit would then rise to 68 flights per hour, from mid-June through late October. That would be a big decrease on many summer afternoons, when the number of flights currently scheduled can reach the high 70s or low 80s, according to the Cirium data.
United Airlines would be affected the most because it operates about 70 percent of the flights at Newark, which is one of its eight airport hubs. But if the F.A.A. limits help to stabilize operations at the airport, it will be worth it, Andrew Nocella, United’s chief commercial officer, said at a company event in New York on Tuesday.
Mr. Nocella described the cap at 68 flights per hour as “a great outcome.”
“Hopefully, as we get through the summer and into the fall, when staffing with the F.A.A. improves, we can increase the number,” he said. “But the most important thing is to make sure when you head out to Newark that you can get on your aircraft and you know it’s going to go and it’s going to go on time.”
Just months ago, Newark’s operations were not far behind those of other major New York-area airports. Over the 12 months that ended in January, 77 percent of Newark’s departures were on time, compared with 78 percent at Kennedy International Airport and 80 percent at LaGuardia Airport, according to federal data. Over that period, 76 percent of flights arriving at Newark were on time, compared with 77 percent at Kennedy and 79 percent at LaGuardia.
