The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it suffered a new outage at a Philadelphia facility overseeing air traffic at Newark Liberty airport, the latest in a string of equipment woes that have hindered traffic and raised public alarm.
The FAA said the telecommunications outage impacted communications and radar displays at Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control that guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty around 3:55 a.m. ET on Friday and lasted approximately 90 seconds.
WABC reported air traffic controllers could be heard on a radio transmission telling a FedEx plane that their screens went dark.
The latest incident highlights the air traffic control network’s aging infrastructure and comes a day after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed spending billions of dollars to fix it over the next three to four years.
The FAA said Wednesday it was taking immediate steps to address ongoing problems that have disrupted hundreds of flights at Newark since April 28 especially from United Airlines UAL.O, the largest carrier at the airport located just outside New York City.
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.
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Duffy said Thursday that the FAA had two redundant lines “both are up and working now” at Philadelphia.
The FAA did not immediately answer why the backup did not prevent Friday’s incident.
Newark has 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.
FlightAware said Newark on Friday is experiencing inbound flights delayed averaging more than four hours and departure delays averaging 1 hour or more.
Duffy said Thursday controllers overseeing planes at the busy airport lost contact with aircraft on April 28 for 30 to 90 seconds, an incident that raised serious alarm.
The FAA last year relocated control of the Newark airspace to Philadelphia to address staffing and congested New York City area traffic.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo and Rajesh Kumar Singh Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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