Your Flight Delay Is Probably New York's Fault
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What causes flight delays in New York?
If you were stranded at an airport over Thanksgiving weekend or sitting on the tarmac for a long time waiting to take off, there's a pretty good chance you can blame New York.
How complex is New York's airspace?
New York has been a major bottleneck for years. That's our colleague Andrew Tangle. He covers aviation. It's some of the most complex airspace in the world, definitely in the country. So if you think about it, you've got Newark, you've got LaGuardia, you've got JFK, and you've got all these other little airports around them, like Teterboro and so forth, and they're all stacked on top of each other. And planes coming from all around the world, helicopters, sightseeing tours in Manhattan, it's all just right there together, and there's not much space. It's kind of like a metaphor for New York City.
And when the airspace in New York is congested, it has an outsized impact on the rest of the country.
Airlines are finely tuned operations, and once that's thrown off, it just sort of cascades through the nation's air travel system.
Why is there a staffing shortage of air traffic controllers?
The Federal Aviation Administration has estimated that as much as 75% of the country's flight delays stem from problems related to New York. 75%. The reason there are so many delays around New York isn't just because it's a complicated airspace. It's also because there aren't enough air traffic controllers there.
It's analogous to any profession where you have the same amount of workload and not enough people. When you've got too much on one controller's plate, the FAA, they basically, they slow air traffic down so that the controllers who are there can handle it safely.
This summer, the FAA rolled out a bold plan in an effort to release this bottleneck. It took oversight of the airspace around Newark Airport, one of the big three airports in the New York area, and moved it to Philadelphia. But things are still a mess. It hasn't fixed the staffing issues yet, and it's introduced some new risks.
And this big high-stakes move by the FAA raises the question of whether or not the cure, at least for now, is worse than the disease.
What is the FAA's plan to alleviate air traffic issues?
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Monday, December 2nd. Coming up on the show, the struggle to fix America's most complex airspace. When you think about air traffic controllers, you probably picture the people up in airport towers. But that's actually just part of the whole air traffic control ecosystem. There's actually different kinds of air traffic controllers for different layers of airspace. The people in the towers handle the planes that are the lowest altitude, basically right after takeoff or landing. The air traffic controllers that we're talking about today handle the airspace that's just above that, above takeoff and landing, but still below cruising altitude.
And it's a really stressful job.
The controllers have to make sure that they're lining up all the airplanes safely. They tell them where to go, where to turn, what altitude, what speed to go at, and they've got to juggle all this and sort of act like a conductor at an orchestra.
These controllers don't always work at airports because they don't need to look at planes in the sky. They work mostly off radar screens and other digital equipment. They're part of something called a TRACON, which stands for Terminal Radar Approach Control. There are TRACONs all over the country. For decades, the TRACON controllers in New York worked out of a windowless room on Long Island.
It's this big building tucked in the suburbs of New York City out on Long Island in the town of Westbury. And it's called the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, or in air traffic control jargon, it's a TRACON.
Working at any TRACON can be stressful, but the TRACON in New York stands apart.
It's kind of the biggest, baddest TRACON in the whole country.
How does the culture at TRACON affect operations?
Even the FAA's recruitment videos emphasized how tough the place is. There's an incredible operational challenge here.
The complexity of the traffic, the volume. There's very little room for error.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What causes flight delays in New York?
0:05–0:16
2
How complex is New York's airspace?
0:16–1:16
3
Why is there a staffing shortage of air traffic controllers?
1:16–2:30
4
What is the FAA's plan to alleviate air traffic issues?
2:30–4:53
5
How does the culture at TRACON affect operations?
4:53–12:02
6
What was the response from the Controllers Union?
12:02–17:41