Could Newark's trouble affect your summer travels? Here's what to know

USA Today

28-05-2025

Could Newark's trouble affect your summer travels? Here's what to know | Cruising Altitude
People, understandably, keep asking me if they need to worry about flying to, from or through Newark Liberty International Airport this summer.
The airport has been in the news for disruptions for a month now, and travelers are worried about what those high-profile headaches mean for their trips.
If you, too, are wondering what to do this summer if you're planning a trip that involves the East Coast, here's what you need to know. The good news is, you probably don't need to be as concerned as you may think.
Problems at Newark
So, how did we get here? Newark has had a month of delays and cancellations because of a number of overlapping issues.
'The most acute problem right now is the runway construction that's going on there,' Brett Snyder, author of the blog Cranky Flier and owner of the travel agency Cranky Concierge, told me. Newark is down one runway, which limits the airport's flexibility.
On top of that, a series of radar and radio outages prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to further reduce the number of flight operations at the airport, partly because a handful of controllers took trauma leave after briefly losing contact with planes in April.
Those flight reductions are meant to keep passengers safe. The FAA wants to ensure that controllers have the bandwidth and tech capabilities to handle the amount of traffic they're responsible for.
'The only way to ensure safety is to bring the volume down so we're not at that tipping point,' Sheldon Jacobson, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois' Grainger College of Engineering, previously told me.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed sweeping technology upgrades for the FAA to address the agency's aging infrastructure, but those proposals haven't yet been funded by Congress, and they'll take years to implement even once the money is secured.
'It's absurd that it's been so difficult to get a modernized system that they've been talking about for more than 25 years,' Snyder said.
In the meantime, the agency will keep chugging along on old infrastructure.
Is Newark still a safe airport?
Experts agree that despite the issues and aging technology, Newark remains a safe hub for travel.
'I don't think I would be overly concerned on the safety issues, but I would have real concerns about the on-time issue,' Snyder said.
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Are more disruptions in the Northeast likely?
Another cause for optimism is that airlines are rearranging their schedules ahead of the summer crush. The FAA announced new caps on operations at Newark, and United Airlines, which is the largest carrier at the airport, significantly cut back its schedule already.
That means that there's a plan in place to try to keep disruptions to a minimum this summer, but it doesn't mean it's guaranteed smooth sailing.
Snyder said that in some ways, the flight reduction at Newark could make flying in the Northeast a little easier for everyone this summer.
'It could actually benefit the rest of the system in the Northeast, because there are fewer aircraft trying to use that airspace,' he said. 'You will have fewer airplanes that they need to try and sequence. That may be a stretch, but it's possible.'
Jacobson warned, however, that as equipment across the FAA's air traffic control organization ages, disruptions like those happening at Newark could become more frequent at other facilities as well.
'This could have happened anywhere. It happened to happen at Newark,' he said. 'The question is what's so special there? The chances are others are going to start to experience other breakdowns.'
How to avoid problems on your own trip
While travelers may be thinking more about the possibilities for disruption to their flight plans this summer, given the news cycle, experts say the situation is less extraordinary than it seems.
'If you look at travel delays and travel cancelations, the primary reason continues to be due to weather,' Jacobson said. 'We cannot control the weather. When a storm system comes through the New York City area, you're going to end up with delays.'
Snyder agreed that weather remains a major concern for summer travel, and the usual advice for dealing with that applies.
'It's no different than any other summer. If you can fly nonstop, fly nonstop, it makes your life easier. If you have a connection in a place that is potentially likely to be impacted by weather or whatever it may be, just give yourself a buffer on your connection time, and just be patient,' he said.
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at [e-mail].