A 90-second failure of Newark Airport’s air-traffic safety systems, which blacked out communication to planes carrying thousands of passengers, has exposed a new level of crisis in air travel.Kate Kelly, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, explains what the problems at one of the country’s biggest airports tell us about air-travel safety in the United States.Guest: Kate Kelly, an investigative reporter for The New York Times based in Washington, D.C.Background reading: How lost radar and silent radios upended Newark air travel.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Dakota Santiago for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What caused the Newark Airport air traffic failure?
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. A 90-second failure of Newark Airport's air traffic safety systems, which blacked out communication to planes carrying thousands of passengers, has prompted a new level of concern in air travel.
Today, my colleague Kate Kelly explains what the problems at one of the country's biggest airports tell us about air travel safety in the United States. It's Thursday, May 8th. Kate Kelly, welcome to The Daily. Thanks for having me, Rachel. Kate, there have been a string of incidents in U.S. air travel in recent months that have really, I think, shaken consumer confidence in flying.
For example, we had the deadliest plane crash in decades in the U.S. happen in January in Washington, D.C., And then there have been all these reports of near misses, near collisions. And then finally, now, most recently, we have this major failure in air traffic control systems in Newark.
We have talked on the show before about how aviation generally, the system is under a lot of pressure in this country. But what's happening with Newark feels like an even more of an escalation from the problems that we've discussed before. And I think a lot of people are wondering what on earth is going on and is it actually less safe to fly right now? Yeah.
Chapter 2: How did the failure affect passenger safety?
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.,
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.
So talk a little bit about that system failure more. Like, what exactly happened?
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.
I don't know.
I'm waiting.
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Chapter 3: What were the immediate consequences of the system outage?
And all of the radios go silent.
So they can't see the planes and they can't communicate with the pilots. Correct.
So what happens then is one person starts shouting, I've lost my radar feed. A supervisor rushes over to see what's going on. Another controller grabs a landline telephone, calls colleagues in air traffic control who are based in Long Island, and says, please hold your planes in the LaGuardia Airport airspace because I don't know if my planes are going to drift into your planes.
I have no way to communicate with my planes.
Wow.
They lost three radars. They lost all the radios that approached them. Just got told that the approach lost all the radars. Three of the four radar screens went black and they have no frequencies.
And then at the same time, controllers gathered around one of the radar screens that was functioning. And as it was described to me, they were just trying to figure out what else they could possibly do to improve the situation, ensure that crashes didn't happen, or get in touch with other colleagues who could help them.
But there wasn't a whole lot left for them to do other than hope for the best and hope that their visuals and their audios came back.
Canada 585, the TRACON is troubleshooting an issue. They lost all their frequencies. We got nobody coming in, nobody going out. Okay. Any idea how long or just whenever they figure it out? Whenever they figure it out, I've got no idea. Okay.
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Chapter 4: How does the technology used in air traffic control work?
And a short while after that, they also got the radar back.
What usually happens in these situations, and I think what happened here is
Other controllers who are in the building come and take over because the experience of those that have been on those positions is just so terrifying that they can't be expected to just pick right up on the work. And, you know, there was one person in the hallway apparently who was just trembling and others who went home and cried and are having nightmares at this point.
Yeah, understandably. I mean, this sounds like the scariest thing that could possibly happen to you in your entire career.
Yes, controllers have told me, Rachel, that this is the worst type of thing that can happen other than an actual crash. How long did that outage last in total? To the best of our understanding, the radio came back after roughly 30 seconds. Although, to those who were in the room witnessing this, apparently it felt like... An eternity. An eternity. Yep.
The displays took a little bit longer, so that was closer to a minute and a half.
Obviously, a minute and a half does not sound like a long period of time, but can you just explain to us, like, why that period of time could even matter?
90 seconds is a long time when you consider the fact that these aircraft are supposed to be separated, varying depending on their location and how close to landing or takeoff they are, by at least a couple of miles, two, three miles, and at least 1,000 vertical feet.
So within 90 seconds, you could well see how just mathematically you could have planes crashing into each other without proactive guidance from an air traffic controller.
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Chapter 5: What issues have arisen from outdated air traffic control technology?
Passengers that colleagues of ours have talked to at the airport have been frustrated. They said they're waiting on customer service calls for 45 minutes or an hour. They don't know what to do. People broadly are nervous about flying in and out of Newark Airport. They're wondering if it's safe.
This has had a cascading effect of creating anxiety and mistrust in the public, and it's unlikely that there's a quick fix.
Okay, so let's talk about exactly what went wrong here. Help me understand how this all happened.
Yeah, so I think the show has covered really well some of the issues bedeviling the United States airspace and air traffic control in particular. But in my opinion, Newark has become sort of this recent crucible for a combination of two pretty major strands fraying at the same time, both technology that we all collectively rely on to keep air travel safe and
and staffing issues so all of that is combining for probably the most public most nerve-wracking air travel disruption that we've seen in recent years it's all coming to a head at newark basically yes well let's start with the technology piece of it can you just explain what exactly is going wrong with the technology at newark
Yeah, so start with the notion that system-wide, the FAA is working with pretty dated technology. Two lawmakers this week have referred to the fact that this Newark outage generated with a quote-unquote fried copper wire.
I haven't been able to verify that with government officials, but it's been spoken of and written about and is probably a plausible metaphor, if not a real explanation, because you are dealing with copper wiring in a lot of these locations. Got it.
So even if copper wire didn't literally get fried here, the point that I think you're making is that this technology is old and it's prone to breaking down.
That's right. The other problem with this aged system is that it's prone to hiccups and delays that can make it extremely difficult at times for air traffic controllers to keep up with what is happening. The air traffic information they're getting may not be real time or may be frozen or interrupted permanently. by glitches along the line. Just explain that.
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Chapter 6: How does data transmission affect air traffic safety?
Wow. So wait, they actually had another outage before this latest one? Like, this isn't the first time this has happened?
So there have been three outages that we know of, including the one that occurred last week. Wow. The first one I'll come back to in a second, because it's sort of a horse of a different color. But the one I was mentioning... And it resulted from the sort of pit stop idea that we were talking about. It essentially related to the fact that this data was traveling a little bit further.
And the data stream that feeds into these Newark air traffic controller screens was affected by data issues at a different local airport that were sort of overstressing the system. And what was the third outage that you mentioned that you said was kind of different? So that one was a more significant disruption. It occurred last August 27th.
And what happened there was that an outside vendor working for the FAA accidentally clipped or unplugged literally a feed of data. Oh, my God. Yeah. So you could hear the air traffic controller who was dealing with the downed technology saying, attention all aircraft, radar contact is lost. Radar contact is lost when you listen to the audio recordings from that day.
That was another 90-second outage.
It doesn't seem like it should be that easy to cause such a dangerous system failure. The idea that like one guy pulls out the wrong plug. Like, should there be some sort of, I don't know, safety net to prevent that from happening?
Yeah, I remember somebody who was around at the time told me they don't even necessarily care what the exact causes are of this outage, whether it's someone with a big pair of scissors or someone, you know, knocking a plug out of the wall. Regardless, this should be the Fort Knox of aviation data.
In other words, this should be an impenetrable system with multiple backups that is never permitted to fail.
You know, Kate, I have to say, even though I've been obviously an avid listener of The Daily and consumer of The New York Times, I had no idea that the technology issues in air travel were this bad and this terrifying. Right.
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Chapter 7: What recurring issues have been reported in U.S. air travel?
And maybe you would do that for a couple of years, and maybe after that, you would do something like Indianapolis, Indiana. And then after you had done that for a while, you might eventually work your way up to an airspace like Newark.
But even when you arrived at Newark, even if you were coming from a major airport like O'Hare, you would still need to train for roughly a year to learn all the nuances and all the techniques associated with that Newark airspace. Right.
So even if today the FAA identified 10 new people that it wanted to send to do air traffic control at Newark, that would be a year, give or take, before they'd be ready.
In other words, just because you say, okay, we're going to give you the money to hire 10 new people, 100 new people, that does not mean that you have 10 or 100 new people that are ready tomorrow to take a job at Newark, one of the busiest airports in the country. That's right.
And these staffing issues at Newark are not new. In fact, part of the reason that these people we're talking about were relocated to Philadelphia in the first place was to solve for a problem that Newark controllers were having with low personnel. They had been working in Long Island for many years, controlling this Newark airspace from Long Island.
And there were ongoing issues recruiting and retaining people who could work that airspace. Some of it had to do with cost of living. Long Island, New York area, an expensive place to live, an expensive place to try to buy a house or raise a family. So it spent several years trying to convince controllers and their union that they should move to Philadelphia.
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Chapter 8: What are the public's concerns following the incident?
The FAA reasoned that with the lower cost of living in the Philadelphia area, they might be able to recruit and retain more people. So that move to Philadelphia, did that help with the staffing issues, ultimately? Well, no. And to be fair to the FAA, it was always going to be a long-term play, given this kind of long pipeline we were just talking about.
But a variety of issues have meant that their numbers are actually down at this point. So let me just walk you through it. For a long time, the FAA had set the air traffic controller target associated with this Newark space at over 60 people. 63 is the number that I heard.
But around the time that they proposed and undertook this move of people to Philadelphia, they changed the target to something like 42 air traffic controllers. That would be a full staff for controlling Newark airspace from this particular hub.
But wait, initially they said that they needed 60-something controllers, and now the FAA is saying they only need 42. Why did they change that?
I don't have a clear explanation for that, and controllers think it's strange. But they lowered their expectations at some stage in time, maybe because they were just trying to be pragmatic about the numbers that they had. Now, almost a year into this relocation, the FAA now says they have 22 people who are fully certified to work the airspace. But let me put that in context for you.
So according to a government document about staffing that I've reviewed, A full day shift, an eight-hour shift, should be 10 people. And a night shift should be 14 people. At the time of this radar outage that we're talking about, you had four controllers on duty sitting in front of those radar scopes.
So basically what you're saying is that at the time of this outage, they had a third of the people that they actually need to run air traffic control at a super busy time at Newark. Yeah, under normal staffing guidelines, that's what they would have. Given the numbers of the air traffic controllers that are actually working at Newark, is there a safe number of flights that can fly in and out?
Like, how many planes ideally should be going in and out of that airport if there's only four people who are working at any given time?
Well, let me tell you what the CEO of United Airlines says about this. He's working in close contact with the FAA. He wrote in a letter today, 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.
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