Where Have U.S. Air Traffic Controllers Lost Communication With Planes? Here's A Timeline
MAY 19: NEWARKOn Monday, a two-second air traffic control radio frequency outage-–the fourth communications breakdown in a month-–occurred at Newark Liberty International Airport, Reuters and CNN reported.
MAY 18: HOUSTONThe FAA is investigating a power issue at Houston's William P. Hobby Airport that briefly delayed inbound flights, the agency confirmed online.
MAY 12: DENVERAir traffic controllers and pilots lost contact for at least 90 seconds at Denver International Airport when multiple radio transmitters failed and controllers switched to a backup frequency to relay instructions to pilots.
MAY 11: NEWARK AND ATLANTAFlights into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport-–the nation's busiest—were temporarily delayed due to what airport officials described as 'an equipment outage at ATL's air traffic control tower,' Atlanta's NBC-affiliated news station reported.The FAA ordered a 45-minute ground stop following a brief telecommunications outage at the Philadelphia TRACON (terminal radar approach control) Area C facility, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Airport.
MAY 9: NEWARKAir traffic controllers handling flights approaching and departing Newark Airport experienced a radar blackout for approximately 90 seconds, the FAA confirmed.
APRIL 28: NEWARKControllers at the Philadelphia TRACON overseeing traffic at Newark Liberty International Airport lost radar communications with airplanes for 30 seconds.
PRIOR INCIDENTSA 'current veteran controller' who wished not to be identified told NBC News that controllers guiding planes into Newark airport have lost radar contact with pilots 'at least eight or nine times in recent months' and on at least two other occasions since August 2024.
More than 40 reports of radar and radio glitches at dozens of air traffic control facilities have occurred since 2022, according to a CNN analysis published Wednesday.
Wednesday's CNN report reveals the equipment outages plaguing Newark Airport have been an ongoing issue for years. In recent weeks, air traffic controllers responsible for the nation's airspace have experienced a string of equipment outages and other technological failures at airports around the country, including major hubs like Atlanta and Denver. Earlier this month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted to NBC's Kristen Welker, 'What you see in Newark is going to happen in other places across the country.' Duffy has characterized the FAA's existing equipment as safe, but old. 'We have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly,' Duffy said. 'But we should also recognize we're seeing–we're seeing stress on an old network, and it's time to fix it.'
On May 8, Duffy announced his agency would replace the United States' aging air traffic control system with new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies while equipping controllers with new radar, radios and voice switches. Duffy said the rebuild would happen 'in three to four years' if Congress allocates tens of billions of dollars. The agency will roll out improvements in stages and prioritize facilities 'based on needs,' Frank McIntosh, the FAA's deputy chief operating officer for Air Traffic Organization, clarified at a recent Senate hearing on FAA reauthorization.
The FAA's decades-long shortage of air traffic controllers is an exacerbating issue. As of now, the agency is short 3,000 controllers. Since it takes three to four years to fully certify an air traffic controller, there is no quick fix. McIntosh said the FAA has 3,100 trainees in the pipeline and will 'finally start getting traction this year where we outpace attrition, and then we'll start seeing, over the next 18 to 24 months, where we actually see a positive gain in the controllers.'
Denver Airport Outage: Air Traffic Control Lost Contact With Up To 20 Pilots On Monday, Reports Say (Forbes)
Newark Airport Crisis: FAA Announces Upgrade Plan For Communication System (Forbes)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Skift
21 minutes ago
- Skift
From Concur to Spotnana: Steve Singh on How AI Could Fix Corporate Travel
Corporate travel is still a nightmare of fragmented systems, which means that rebooking canceled flights can be headache-inducing. Yet Concur co-founder Steve Singh believes new tech could bring the dawn of "the pefect trip." Steve Singh spent two decades building Concur into the dominant travel-and-expense management platform before selling it to SAP for $8.3 billion in 2014. A year ago he became CEO of Spotnana, a startup that aims to solve the industry's lingering problems. The travel technology sector has struggled for years with fragmented systems that force companies to cobble together bookings from multiple sources while maintaining adequate customer service. These back-end issues have delayed the arrival of what Singh called 'The Perfect Trip' in an interview with Skift in 2014. Now Singh argues that today's cloud-native computing and machine learning can solve problems that proved intractable when he first tackled them at Concur more than 40 years ago. 'I haven't been this excited about how tech can improve the corporate travel experience since mobile phones became widespread,' Singh said in an interview at Global Business Travel Association conference in Denver last month. Steve Singh, CEO of Spotnana, seated in white shirt at the company's recent conference. Singh works with key executives like Sarosh Waghmar at Spotnana, Naveen Singh at Center, Dennis Vilovic at Troop, and Christal Bemont at Direct Travel. Source: Spotnana Automating Services Spotnana's approach centers on automating routine travel services like rebookings and refunds. For corporate customers buying the travel, Spotnana will offer business intelligence tools and analytical services to let executives more clearly understand what their employees are spending on travel. 'Instead of a 15% cut across the board, which is indiscriminate, what if an AI agent could say, 'I'll get you the 15% savings by reducing travel spend by 40% for people that are not revenue producing while not reducing it at all for others, thanks to the intel I know on the clients they're visiting and the productivity of those employees on the road,'' Singh said. Singh claimed Spotnana could reduce travel management companies' operational costs by roughly half. The tech vendor said it doesn't accept global distribution system incentives and doesn't hide or bias content to reach supplier volume targets. Singh said Spotnana expects to deploy its AI agent capabilities within the next two to three years. He described plans for 'an AI agent that was trained on, say, your top 10% of your corporate travel agents' that could provide consistent, scalable service while understanding individual traveler preferences and company policies. 'Imagine an AI agent that not only knows me and my corporate policies and my personal preferences, but then it can also be an expert in every city I want to go for work or for leisure,' Singh said. 'That starts to deliver a client experience that is no different than the world's best executive assistant.' Singh said that AI may also help with either predicting and responding in the moments when trips are disrupted by cancellations. Automated reactions are key, he said: 'If my flight is delayed, I shouldn't have to pick up my phone and call somebody to change flights. Why can't there be a recommendation pushed right into my app, saying here are the three options within your company's travel policy, here are the three options outside your policy. Which one would you like?' Frenemies Spotnana, which has disclosed raising over $100 million in funding, faces established competitors with services that overlap. While Spotnana is not a travel management company, its technology and full-content approach are similar to travel management companies like Navan (which has raised over $1.2 billion in funding) and TravelPerk (over $700 million). Yet some industry observers remain skeptical about whether new technology can overcome the travel sector's entrenched interests and complex commercial relationships. The American Airlines' ill-fated effort to change how corporations and travel management companies book business travel suggests the challenges facing any attempt to change distribution. But Singh said cloud computing costs are 'one-tenth' of what they were 15 to 20 years ago. Key corporate travel systems are now cloud-native and use modern APIs, or data exchange methods. More importantly, suppliers, buyers, and travel management companies have greater incentives to change the status quo, he said. Spotnana offers its tech to Direct Travel, a company Singh also backs, and other travel management companies, such as Solutions Travel. It works with corporate buyers via connections with their preferred travel management companies. Yet Spotnana is also a tool for the suppliers themselves. 'We think there's multiple tiers of opportunity with our supplier partners,' Singh said. 'One is the content distribution to travel management companies. But the other is that most of our supplier partners also want us to build other services for them.' Spotnana's effort to be all things to all people could get dicey if travel management companies come to fear it as potentially siphoning off their business by competing on fees and services to woo buyers. Singh said he sees Spotnana's opportunity with suppliers as being in providing services that travel management companies typically don't, such as by giving suppliers deeper insights into their customers. A case in point: Spotnana has partnered with Marriott to power the hotel chain's small business portal, Business Access, handling both content distribution and booking management. 'We're taking advantage of the biggest transformation I've seen in travel since we moved from paper based tickets to digital,' Singh said. What am I looking at? The performance of travel tech stocks within the ST 200. The index includes companies publicly traded across global markets including both online travel booking companies and B2B travel tech companies. The Skift Travel 200 (ST200) combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number. See more travel tech financial sector performance. Read the full methodology behind the Skift Travel 200.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Starbucks Plans Kiosks to Cut Long Lines at Airport Locations
Starbucks Corp. is working on adding ordering kiosks to busy locations in the US that cater to on-the-go customers. The Seattle-based coffee chain has been exploring how to shorten lines at high-traffic places such as airports, Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams said in an internal meeting this week, according to a recording reviewed by Bloomberg News. Snaking queues of caffeine-deprived travelers are a common sight at terminals around the US.
%3Amax_bytes(150000)%3Astrip_icc()%2FTAL-avis-first-AVISPREMIUM0725-33ae48126d69457ea3830b63727232d6.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
Travel + Leisure
6 hours ago
- Travel + Leisure
Avis' New Premium Service Is a VIP Experience With a Personal Concierge—and No Shuttle or Counter Required
Avis Budget Group introduced a brand-new luxury service this week, allowing customers to skip the time-consuming airport shuttle and rental car counter. The new curbside service, called Avis First, will bring rental cars directly to customers at the airport terminal, according to the company. Currently, the new service is available at major airports in Denver; Honolulu; and Palm Beach, Florida. 'I remember the days of hauling strollers, car seats, and luggage through an airport tram, and that can be tough," Avis CEO Brian Choi told Travel + Leisure . "We think this makes a huge difference." Choi said he views the Avis First service as a brand-new category in the rental car market, offering premium, concierge-level customer service. When travelers sign up at the airport, they are assigned a personal concierge and their chosen vehicle is brought right to the terminal. Customers also don't need to deal with the pesky task of refilling the tank or prepaying for gas as Avis just charges the market price for whatever was used. All of the cars used for the Avis First program are 2025 models with low mileage. Beyond airports, the service is offered in select locations within the New York City-area, including in Manhattan, Hoboken, and Jersey City; as well as in Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Orlando, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. For neighborhood renters—often families or people traveling for a road-trip—picking up a rental car can be difficult. But with Avis First, the company said it aims to simplify that experience and provide new options for time-conscious travelers seeking a personalized experience. While the perks are significant, travelers can expect to pay a higher price for the experience. An Avis First rental from Sept. 8 to Sept. 12 at Denver International Airport (DEN), for example, will set travelers back $547 for a Mercedes-Benz GLS 450 SUV, according to a search by T+L at the time of writing. In comparison, renting a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the company's "Standard Elite SUV" category will only cost travelers $435 for the same time period. Travelers hoping to save money on a car rental can check their own airline loyalty programs for discounts, search third-party discount sites, keep their eyes peeled for junk fees, set a designated driver, and even keep an eye out for available coupons. Generally (though not always), renting at the airport can cost so travelers who hope to save should instead opt for an off-airport location.
