Planes, Trains and Everything's a Mess for Upfronts and Cannes Travelers at Newark Airport
Let's get this out of the way first: I love really like New Jersey. I was born there and raised there, and lived a year or so in Los Angeles before deciding to return there. I got married there (but engaged in L.A.) and am raising my kids there. It's a great place to be, even if currently a horror to get to (or get out of).
Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) is a major travel hub and the northeast coast's home to United Airlines. Its proximity to New York City and relatively cheap flights makes it an attractive alternative to JFK (John F. Kennedy International Airport;); EWR has something like 11 to 16 nonstop flights daily to LAX and two flights per day directly to Nice, France (and more to Paris). This week, many of the area's air travel will service TV and film industry professionals coming to/from New York City's upfronts and Cannes' Cannes Film Festival. Or will it?
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Those who their booked flights into, out of or through Newark may find themselves grounded for longer than the underrated Donal Logue sitcom Grounded for Life (2001-2005) ran across Fox and The WB. As per usual, they can blame the U.S. government.
Yes, President Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE aren't doing travelers any favors, but a scarcity of air-traffic controllers has existed for years. Newark airport has become ground zero for the issue through a confluence of events — events that haven't actually happened at Newark airport.
The air traffic for the EWR airspace is monitored at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL; the tower you see at Newark is for ground control), as are each of the 50-something satellite airports west of the Hudson River. Airports east of the Hudson, like JFK and LaGuardia Airport (LGA, which still may somehow be a worse option than Newark), have their airspace monitored from Long Island. It's a totally different team controlling their airspace — and if this were a competition, they'd totally be winning.
Regardless of the ground geography, multiple recent communication outages between air-traffic control and pilots flying into and out of Newark has put the spotlight on EWR. Outdated technology and poor facilities problems are compounding the staffing issue, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Hollywood Reporter. It certainly doesn't help that a major runway at Newark International Airport is currently under construction.
When it rains, it pours. Oh, yeah! Weather in the region has made matters even worse.
They're probably not about to get better. At midnight tonight, NJ Transit rail workers — specifically the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen — are poised walk off the job and go on strike. Take a wild guess as to which major airport is a NJ Transit stop for multiple rail lines in the Garden State and from New York Penn Station? Right.
These two issues are about to meet head-on, and it is pretty much consuming all of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy's time. At the Tuesday groundbreaking for Netflix Studios Fort Monmouth, nearly all of the questions (except ours!) for Gov. Murphy were about the looming NJ Transit rail strike and the shitshow that is Newark airport.
'I don't believe, and I've heard no evidence on the contrary, that there's a safety issue,' Murphy told reporters on the EWR flight delays, cancellations and communications outages. 'But there's just a huge mismatch in supply-demand in terms of the flights that take off and land in Newark and the manpower that could support that.'
If you think that sounds bad, consider his stance on the potential NJ Transit walkout.
'I'm still hoping we find some resolution here,' Murphy said. 'But we're preparing for the worst.'
Crap.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a memo dated May 7 that 'all the flights in and out of EWR are absolutely safe…But when the FAA has technology outages or staffing shortages, it does lead to delays and cancellations for our customers and *that's* the issue we're determined to solve for the longterm.'
Per website flightaware.com, there were 501 total delays at Newark Liberty International Airport yesterday and 132 cancellations. Today, there have already been 391 delays at Newark airport and 142 cancellations as of 4:40 p.m. ET.
'In ideal weather, with full staffing and with perfectly functioning technology, the FAA tells us that the airport can only handle 77 flights per hour,' Kirby wrote to his staff. 'And yet, the FAA regularly approves schedules of 80+ flights per hour almost every day between 3:00pm and 8:00pm. This math doesn't work. Especially when there is weather, staffing issues or technology breakdowns — the airspace, taxiways, and runways get backed up and gridlock occurs.'
Sounds like a smart guy. Then again, he goes on to call EWR 'a crown jewel of the region' — twice — so then again, what does he know?
That aside, Kirby is correct. Newark airport is the only major airport in the world to not be slot-controlled, meaning the number of scheduled flights cannot exceed the airport's max capacity. EWR was slot-controlled until 2016, when the FAA de-slotted it for some insane reason.'In reality, only the FAA can actually fix EWR,' Kirby wrote.
But who can fix the FAA?Best of The Hollywood Reporter
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