Kate Kelly

That seems extreme.

So I went about the reporting.

I did a whole ton of interviews.

And I wrote a draft of the story.

But there was a little part of me that thought, you don't quite have this.

So I went back out and did some more reporting, digging into that little piece that was bugging me.

And it turned out the conspiracists were essentially right.

Because I had that extra time and I was willing to be surprised, I think I got the right story and was able to deliver that to our readers.

So I'm really grateful that that open-mindedness is there in me, but is also shot through our institution where the editor will say, yeah, take another two weeks and get it right.

If this kind of independent journalism is important to you, you can support it and the coverage that I do by subscribing to The New York Times.

It's a really great question, Rachel, and one that I've been asking myself and my colleagues. Are we just paying more attention in the wake of the DCA crash to issues, whether it's wing bumping or actual crashes in the national airspace, or are there actually more occurring? Anecdotally, it certainly feels like the latter. But what I think has really caught people's attention

It's a really great question, Rachel, and one that I've been asking myself and my colleagues. Are we just paying more attention in the wake of the DCA crash to issues, whether it's wing bumping or actual crashes in the national airspace, or are there actually more occurring? Anecdotally, it certainly feels like the latter. But what I think has really caught people's attention

are these issues at Newark Liberty International Airport, which is one of the busiest in the national air system in the U.S.,

are these issues at Newark Liberty International Airport, which is one of the busiest in the national air system in the U.S.,

They had a major radar and radio outage on Monday, the 28th of April, that led to essentially chaos for passengers and a public outcry among government officials and even among some controllers themselves that the system was not safe and was not necessarily reliable for all the people flying in and out of that airport.

They had a major radar and radio outage on Monday, the 28th of April, that led to essentially chaos for passengers and a public outcry among government officials and even among some controllers themselves that the system was not safe and was not necessarily reliable for all the people flying in and out of that airport.

Picture a relatively normal early afternoon at an air traffic control hub. where you have these air traffic controllers who essentially guide planes in and out of airports, sitting at workstations in front of what we call scopes, radar scopes. And this is kind of a circular screen that tells you within a certain diameter of airspace which aircraft are flying in and out.

Picture a relatively normal early afternoon at an air traffic control hub. where you have these air traffic controllers who essentially guide planes in and out of airports, sitting at workstations in front of what we call scopes, radar scopes. And this is kind of a circular screen that tells you within a certain diameter of airspace which aircraft are flying in and out.

So they're watching these, they have a headset, and the headset is attached to a radio frequency through which they can have two-way communications with pilots who are in the air. So they're sitting there, and out of nowhere, some of the radar scopes essentially go dark. Not all of them, but some of them.

So they're watching these, they have a headset, and the headset is attached to a radio frequency through which they can have two-way communications with pilots who are in the air. So they're sitting there, and out of nowhere, some of the radar scopes essentially go dark. Not all of them, but some of them.