Newark Airport is no longer safe. Here's why that should terrify us all
On April 28, a power surge in the radar facility serving Newark caused a
The cause? A burned-out copper wire.
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This wasn't a cyberattack. It wasn't sabotage. It was a failure rooted in outdated infrastructure that should have been replaced decades ago. Many of the systems still in use by the Federal Aviation Administration rely on Cold War-era technology. Some control towers still use components involving floppy disks. Meanwhile, radar facilities like the one at Newark have not been meaningfully modernized in years.
As a result, one minor failure cascaded into a dangerous disruption of service. And the human toll is just beginning to reveal itself. More than
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Then, on Sunday, there were 210 flight delays and 88 cancellations at Newark due to safety concerns. As one of the primary gateways to New York City and the surrounding region, The disruption sent ripples across one of the nation's busiest air corridors.
Factor into this
I know firsthand what happens when airline breaking points are ignored.
In 1994, I represented families in the USAir Flight 427 disaster outside Pittsburgh. That crash killed all 132 people on board. It took years of investigation to uncover that a malfunction in the rudder control system caused the aircraft to roll uncontrollably into a nosedive. But just as critical as the technical failure were the ignored reports from pilots who had experienced similar anomalies in the same aircraft model. Had action been taken sooner, Flight 427 might have landed safely. Families might still be whole.
Fast forward to today, and we're seeing those red flags again.
Controllers are publicly warning that Newark is unsafe. Also over the weekend,
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This is not a comment made lightly. These are professionals trained to remain calm in chaos. When they break rank and sound the alarm, it means the threat is both real and immediate.
The airlines know it too. United Airlines, Newark's largest carrier, has suspended 35 daily flights indefinitely, citing reliability concerns linked to the radar facility.
Even under normal circumstances, managing air traffic around Newark is an extraordinarily complex job. The airport sits in the middle of the most congested airspace in the United States, with LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport just miles away. Planes are stacked in tight patterns. Controllers need to coordinate closely with multiple facilities. A communications lapse here doesn't just affect Newark — it threatens the entire region.
And yet the FAA continues to operate flights as if nothing happened. The FAA issued a statement assuring travelers that the outage was resolved, and that safety 'was never compromised.'
Let me be clear: That's not how safety works in aviation.
When air traffic control loses radar and radio contact with multiple aircraft in flight, safety is profoundly compromised. We may have collectively avoided disaster by sheer luck or pilot skill, but that doesn't mean the system held. It means we all dodged a bullet. This time
.
What happens next time? What happens if the next outage lasts five minutes instead of one? What if the staffing shortage means a controller misses a conflict between two planes on intersecting runways? These aren't hypotheticals. They are foreseeable events in a system already frayed.
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So what can be done?
First, there needs to be transparency. The FAA and airlines must level with the public. If Newark is not operating safely, travelers deserve to know.
Second, the FAA needs to reduce the number of flights to match current capabilities until the radar facility is fully modernized and staffing levels return to baseline. It can't continue pretending everything is normal. It's not.
Third, travelers should avoid Newark. Fly from JFK or LaGuardia. Take the train. Drive. It may be inconvenient, but inconvenience is a small price to pay for safety.
For the families I represented after Flight 427, the pain never ended. They trusted that the system in place would protect them. That trust was shattered by a failure no one had the courage to fix in time.
The FAA should have the courage now. It has the warnings. The question is: Will it act?
Because if it doesn't, the nation may wake up one day to another headline, another crash, and another round of anguished families asking why no one listened when they had the chance.
Let's not let Newark become our next aviation tragedy.
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