Newark Airport Faces Another Disturbing Issue on May 11
Newark Airport reportedly experienced another outage Sunday, resulting in a temporary ground stop at the facility.
Newark has been besieged with problems over the last few weeks, including multiple air traffic control equipment outages and widespread delays and cancellations of flights. On Sunday, the facility's third reported outage in the last 14 days resulted in the Federal Aviation Administration implementing a ground stop lasting approximately 45 minutes, according to CNN's Pete Muntean.
A ground stop, according to the National Business Aviation Association, is "a traffic management initiative (TMI) requiring aircraft that meet specific criteria to remain on the ground at their origination airport."
Today's ground stop halted any planes bound for Newark from taking off, but did not affect those already in the air.
This morning's outage is the second in the last three days. At around 3:55 a.m. ET Friday, the Philadelphia facility responsible for sorting out traffic for Newark Airport, reported a loss of radar for approximately 90 seconds.
Back on April 28, the same building lost contact with planes for a similar amount of time, resulting in massive delays and cancellations and several air traffic controllers taking trauma leave.
Last week, the FAA announced several major immediate steps to improve the situation at Newark, and the Trump administration, led by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, has promised a multi-billion dollar overhaul of the country's out-of-date air traffic control system, which includes upgrading technology nationwide and implementing a push to hire and train thousands of new air traffic controllers.
“Our region is a key economic artery for our country. Yet this region... one of the busiest air spaces in the world, as I mentioned, is running off a tower that’s full of copper wire dating back to the 1980s with outdated and inefficient technology. And the region is short — and this is a big deal. The region is short about 40 air traffic controllers,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey said at a news conference Friday.
Per FlightAware, 56 flights have been delayed and 78 cancelled at Newark Airport as of 10:50 a.m. ET this morning.