WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Aviation Administration said on Sunday that a new telecommunications issue at the facility that guides aircraft at Newark Liberty International Airport forced the agency to briefly slow aircraft in and out of the airport.
The Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control suffered a new problem that briefly led the FAA to issue a ground stop while it ensured redundancies were working as designed.
The FAA said operations have returned to normal. On Friday, the Philadelphia facility suffered a 90-second radar and telecommunications outage, the second in two weeks after a serious outage on April 28.
The latest incidents highlight the air traffic control network’s aging infrastructure and come after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday proposed spending billions of dollars to fix it over the next three to four years.
Newark Liberty, just outside New York City, has also been hit by runway construction, FAA equipment outages and air traffic control staffing shortages that prompted urgent calls from lawmakers for investigations and new funding. Some controllers took stress leave after the April 28 outage.
Late on Friday, the FAA said it plans to meet with major airlines on Wednesday about potential temporary cuts in flights at Newark to address the recent major disruptions.
Duffy reiterated in an interview that aired on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that flights need to be scaled back.
“We’re having these glitches in the system. So we slow it down and keep people safe. That’s what we do,” Duffy said, pledging quick upgrades to Newark. “We’re going to start to see Newark be far more resilient in the near term.”
The FAA said last week it was taking immediate steps to address ongoing problems that have disrupted hundreds of flights, especially from United Airlines, the largest carrier at the airport.
United has sharply cut flights and wants the FAA to impose new limitations on Newark flights to address ongoing delays.
The FAA said it is increasing air traffic controller staffing, adding three new high-bandwidth telecommunications connections and deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia TRACON during the switch to a more reliable fiber-optic network.
The FAA last year relocated control of the Newark airspace to Philadelphia to address staffing and congested New York City area traffic. The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers below targeted staffing levels.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Rick Cowan; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
By David Shepardson and Richard Cowan
