Even people who live nowhere near New Jersey have been shaken by reports of chronic flight delays and cancellations at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) due to ATC. There’s been a perfect storm of events making a bad situation worse. EWR has become Exhibit A for the justifiable fears that air travelers have over the state of the nation’s air traffic control (ATC).
Some experts are expressing fears about the system’s stability. One controller told me: “For now, I’m staying away from Newark.”
Other professionals have echoed similar sentiments; another controller told MSNBC: “It’s not a safe situation right now for the flying public.”
And my former airline colleague Capt. Ross Aimer said: “ATC never fully recovered from the mass firings of the 11,000 PATCO controllers in 1981.”
So how bad are things at EWR? Should you be concerned?
I’ve spent 40 years in aviation, and while I still believe in the overall statistical safety of the system, I fully understand why recent events have shaken flyers’ confidence.
Avoiding Newark in the near future is nothing less than common sense as long as there are ATC staffing shortages that, at best, have made published flight schedules theoretical and, at worst, are threatening safety.
How did things at EWR get this bad?
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation, is responsible for the chronic staffing shortages, failures of outdated technology, and plenty of bad decisions that are affecting EWR—and airports nationwide.
But to be fair, four decades of controller understaffing and technological underfunding by Congress has also caused this mess.
Meanwhile, the airlines have over-scheduled flights for years, especially at hubs like Newark. Throw in bad weather and a 60-day closure for repairs on a critical runway there, and flight schedules have unraveled, with more than 1,500 delays in a week.
It’s been especially tough on United Airlines, which operates a hub at Newark and, following a merger with Continental Airlines, now controls about 63% of the market share at EWR.
Delayed flights are one thing. Fears about flying are another. EWR has become the emblem of a national crisis, and now it’s critical we have—at long last—a national conversation about how airline safety was crippled.
Last month, before the headlines about EWR began, I wrote here that America’s ATC needs fixing, and I provided clear recommendations on how we should—and should not—be responding. Here are the four major problems at EWR that are also issues nationally and must be addressed.
Failure #1: Controller shortages
Let’s be clear: The FAA has been understaffed for decades, dating back to the Reagan Administration, as Capt. Aimer said. The ATC shortage has persisted in the headlines for some time now.
Overall, the U.S. is short 3,500 controllers, which has led to mandatory overtime, six-day schedules, denial of time off, and forced relocations, especially at Newark. The FAA’s goal for 2025 is to hire 2,000 new controllers nationwide.
This lack of personnel affects 350 airport control towers, regional Terminal Radar Approach Control Facilities (TRACON), and high-altitude Air Route Traffic Control Centers. But the short staffing is not spread equally, and Newark has been particularly hard-hit.
On May 1, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy announced a “new package” to “supercharge” the ATC workforce. It promises financial incentives such as $5,000–$10,000 awards for new hires. Duffy’s plan also includes incentive packages to dissuade veteran controllers from early retirements.
All of which raises obvious questions: Shouldn’t such actions have been considered before this administration made DOGE cuts at the FAA?
And shouldn’t the government have thought twice before shutting off the pipeline of new controllers via DEIA programs?
And do they still think it was wise to harass overworked aviation employees by forcing them to respond to weekly memos from Elon Musk?
Failure #2: Antiquated automation
Compounding the issues caused of low staffing, the equipment used by ATC desperately needs upgrading. By Day 8 of the Newark saga, CNN reported that in April, the Philadelphia TRACON facility that coordinates arrivals at Newark temporarily lost radar and communications with aircraft under its control and was temporarily “unable to see, hear, or talk to them.”
Chilling audio from that outage includes one pilot asking an unresponsive ATC: “Approach, are you there?” This led to at least five controllers taking 45 days of trauma leave in response.
In a letter to customers on May 2, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby wrote that “over 20% of the FAA controllers for EWR walked off the job.” (The leave of absence was legally permitted under the Federal Employees Compensation Act.) In response to media queries about the trauma leave, the FAA stated: “Our antiquated air traffic control system is affecting our workforce.”
Failure #3: Bad decisions by government
For 40 years, both political parties—in both Congress and the White House—haven’t properly staffed, equipped, upgraded, or funded the nation’s ATC. Yet now some are shocked that flights are grounded.
As for the FAA, it has resorted to unconventional methods that sometimes create other issues. In July 2024, the agency relocated 12 controllers overseeing EWR from the TRACON facility on Long Island to Philadelphia. In response, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association stated it was “dismayed” by the reassignments and that the EWR airspace would see a reduction from 33 controllers to 24.
Failure #4: Bad decisions by airlines
As an FAA-licensed dispatcher who worked in airline flight operations, I and many others have noted our airlines are guilty of over-scheduling. Airports—especially busy hubs like Newark—are strained to capacity even on days when nothing like weather or maintenance goes wrong. (News flash: There are no days when nothing goes wrong.)
Through meltdown after meltdown, the airlines’ hub-and-spoke route model has proven to be quite fragile. Once flights are delayed or canceled at a major hub, the domino effect at other airports around the globe can take hours or even days to fix, and our old and understaffed systems are too strained to keep up.
There’s no question what has happened at EWR rings major alarm bells.
The real question: Are we listening?
William J. McGee is the Senior Fellow for Aviation & Travel at American Economic Liberties Project. An FAA-licensed aircraft dispatcher, he spent seven years in airline flight operations management and was Editor-in-Chief of Consumer Reports Travel Letter. He is the author of Attention All Passengers and teaches at Vaughn College of Aeronautics. There is more at www.economicliberties.us/william-mcgee/.