By David Shepardson and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Aviation Administration was forced to briefly slow arriving and departing planes at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday because of a new telecommunications issue, the agency said.
The Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control suffered a new problem that briefly led the FAA to issue a ground stop while it ensured redundancies were working as designed.
The FAA said operations have returned to normal. On Friday, the Philadelphia facility suffered a 90-second radar and telecommunications outage, the second in two weeks after a serious outage on April 28.
The latest incidents highlight the air traffic control network’s aging infrastructure. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday proposed spending billions of dollars to fix the network over the next three to four years.
The FAA last year relocated control of the Newark airspace to Philadelphia to address staffing and congested New York City-area traffic.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said in a press conference in New York City that the ground stop at Newark Liberty, which is located in northern New Jersey just miles from New York City, lasted for 45 minutes and was causing flight delays to ripple through the day.
Noting that Sunday’s problem was the third in recent weeks, Schumer told the FAA that “the usual bureaucratic rules” cannot dictate the pace of modernizing outdated equipment. “Fix it. Fix it now. Do whatever it takes. Don’t go by the old rules. … Newark must be number one in their priority scale.”
Newark Liberty has also been hit by runway construction, FAA equipment outages and air traffic control staffing shortages that prompted urgent calls from lawmakers for investigations and new funding. Some controllers took stress leave after the April 28 outage.
Late on Friday, the FAA said it planned to meet with major airlines on Wednesday about potential temporary cuts in flights at Newark to address the recent major disruptions.
Duffy reiterated in an interview that aired on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that flights need to be scaled back.
“We’re having these glitches in the system. So we slow it down and keep people safe. That’s what we do,” Duffy said, pledging quick upgrades to Newark. “We’re going to start to see Newark be far more resilient in the near term.”
The FAA said last week it was taking immediate steps to address ongoing problems that have disrupted hundreds of flights, especially from United Airlines, the largest carrier at the airport.
United has sharply cut flights and wants the FAA to impose new limitations on Newark flights to address ongoing delays.
The FAA said it is increasing air traffic controller staffing, adding three new high-bandwidth telecommunications connections, and deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia TRACON during the switch to a more reliable fiber-optic network.
The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers below targeted staffing levels.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Richard Cowan; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Leslie Adler)
