Chaos continues to reign at Newark Liberty International Airport, where, in the last few weeks, there have been hundreds of flight cancellations, diversions, and delays, a handful of ground stoppages, and life-threatening technical glitches. Exhausted and over-extended air traffic controllers say they are working six days a week, 10 hours at a time, to ensure the skies above Newark and the Big Apple remain friendly. The Post’s Chris Harris spoke about the ongoing mess at EWR with one of the 13 air traffic controllers who manage flights in and out of Newark from a building more than 80 miles away in Philadelphia. The controller spoke on the condition of anonymity.
I’ve been an air traffic controller since I was 18, and as a flier, I would avoid Newark.
Lately, I’ve been flying out of JFK or LaGuardia, because it’s safer, and there’ve been some crazy-ass delays at Newark. I started telling family and friends last summer to avoid Newark like the plague, because we knew it was going to be bad, we just didn’t think it was going to be this bad with all of the technological issues.
This is a busy area, with the three major airports and all these satellite airports — it’s like a bee’s nest. Back in the ’60s, two airplanes collided over Brooklyn, killing 134 people on the planes and on the ground. So, the FAA went, ‘Hey, you know what? We should put all of these people who control these airports in the same building because it would be safer.’
And it was safer.
Now, they’re like, ‘Let’s dismantle it.’
Five years ago, they decided they were going to move Newark’s controllers from Long Island to Philly, and we tried to fight it. Last summer I was essentially forced [to move to Philadelphia]. We had 33 controllers in New York, and only 24 made the move.
We are understaffed.
In 10 months, instead of having people succeed in Philadelphia, we’ve had 11 say, ‘F–k this, I am not doing this.’ So now, we’re down to 22. Three more are retiring this summer.
Optimally, the FAA says we should have 42 or more, but [the controllers] feel like we should have at least 50.
And we’re behind in technology.
The data link between Philly and New York was never upgraded. They essentially ran an extension cord from New York to Philadelphia. They’re going to install something like a Starlink [satellite technology], and it should be up and running by next week.
The FAA will do everything and anything to turn a blind eye to the situation. They will promise it’s getting better, that things have been fixed, but they can’t fix the radar feed [between Long Island and Philadelphia], so we could still lose radar. What we really need is a radar feed between Newark and Philadelphia.
Luckily, I haven’t had any close calls because of understaffing, but I have been inundated and had to work way harder than I should, and in that situation, I end up having to put in delays and restrictions. I’m used to working with more people.
When traffic is at its peak, we handle about 2,000 operations a day. That’s about 40 to 44 arrivals per hour at the airport.
To be more efficient, Newark needs another runway, on top of the one they’re reconstructing now. They have three now, but there should be four.
We are a busy airport, but the Atlantas, the Denvers, they have three runways, and can run 160 operations an hour. We just don’t have the pavement for that, or room for a fourth runway.
One rumor I have heard is that [federal Transportation Secretary] Sean Duffy was extremely interested in moving Newark’s air traffic controllers back to New York. I have heard that is what he wants to do, that he’s exploring the idea of moving us back.
I have no optimism that this will be resolved quickly. I have zero optimism in the current FAA leadership in fixing this problem because they and the union’s failed leadership over the years is why we’re here now. I’m afraid that the only way the FAA will listen to the controllers and move it back to NY is if EWR has its own disaster, like the recent air collision in Washington, DC.
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