Troubled Newark Airport faces temporary flight cap
The temporary limits are to be put in place as Newark's operations continue to falter. The FAA had another in a long series of ground delays in place for Newark on Monday due to technical and staffing issues, and 40 Newark flights had been canceled Monday as of 12:30 p.m. local time, according to FlightAware.
According to the meeting notice, the FAA plans to propose a maximum of 28 scheduled departures and 28 arrivals per hour until June 15, when a runway that is currently closed for repairs is due to reopen.
The current maximum for departures and arrivals levels varies depending on conditions throughout the day (including weather), staffing levels and equipment capabilities, the FAA said. But for means of comparison, Monday's temporary ground delay at Newark is limiting hourly departures to between 20 and 28, depending upon the hour in question. A cap of 28 departures and arrivals per hour, therefore, would align with recent FAA-imposed limitations.
When Newark runway work is paused in June, the FAA's proposal would target a maximum of 34 arrivals and 34 departures per hour at the airport through the end of October.
Schedule reductions would only address domestic operations, since the scheduled operations by foreign airlines are managed through a process overseen by IATA.
Air traffic control technical problems have been recurrent at Newark in recent weeks. On Sunday, the FAA issued its latest ground stop at the airport, lasting for 45 minutes, due to a telecommunications issue at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility that manages Newark approaches. That followed an approximately 90-second telecommunications and radar display outage early Friday morning at Philadelphia TRACON and a similar length outage of radio and radar on April 28, which led several controllers to take trauma leave.
Since April 15, Newark has averaged 34 arrival cancellations per day, according to the FAA, with the frequency of the cancellations increasing as the day goes on. Delays have also plagued the airport, with the average delay lasting 87 minutes at 7 a.m. and increasing to 137 minutes at 5 p.m.
"The airport clearly is unable to handle the current level of scheduled operations," the FAA meeting notice says.
United, Newark's dominant carrier, has already pared back its schedule by 35 flights per day at Newark to manage the situation. And a solution will take time. The portion of the Philadelphia TRACON that oversees Newark is currently short 14 controllers and is just 63% staffed.
On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and United CEO Scott Kirby went on morning network talk shows, where they assured the public that despite the various technical problems that have impacted Newark air traffic control of late, flying to the airport is safe.
"Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly," Duffy said on "Meet the Press." "But we should also recognize we're seeing stress on an old network, and it's time to fix it."
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