United cut flights at Newark ahead of summer travel, says 'it is absolutely safe to fly'
- The aging air traffic control system is causing flight delays and cancellations, particularly at Newark Liberty International Airport.
- Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy acknowledges the system's age and the need for upgrades while prioritizing safety.
- Airlines, including United, are working with the FAA to address the issues and ensure safe and efficient air travel.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy acknowledged that the air traffic control system is showing signs of its age in a press conference on Tuesday.
Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration is determined to upgrade the hardware air traffic controllers rely on while prioritizing passenger safety. Until that happens, airlines could be forced to trim their schedules to keep airspace safe.
“If we can only do 24-28 flights an hour, that’s all we’re going to do to feel like we are adequate in the mission of keeping people safe in going from Point A to Point B," he said.
Newark Liberty International Airport has been at the center of some of these air traffic control issues for the past few weeks. A temporary radar and radio outage set off delays and cancellations that continue to persist. The equipment failures have repeated a few times since the initial outage on April 28.
Duffy said decisions by the Biden administration to move some of Newark's air traffic control from a facility on Long Island to one in Philadelphia, without ensuring the telecommunication equipment feeding the controller's monitors, is partly to blame for the issues. Still, he acknowledged that the problems did not occur out of the blue. Duffy said President Donald Trump was aware of the issues before finishing his first term and had a plan to fix them in his second term, but was unable to implement that plan when President Biden took office.
“What you see in Newark, we’re going to have to fix, we’re going to do it fast, but we’re going to do it right,” he said. “We could see other situations like this around the country because the system is old.”
Duffy also called on the Office of the Inspector General to begin an inquiry into how the move to Philadelphia for Newark controllers was planned and implemented.
On May 14, Duffy will meet with FAA, airline and airport officials to discuss the summer flight schedule at Newark, and said the result could be schedule cuts.
“All those airlines are going to have to come and explain what they need and make sure we’re doing this in a fair, open and transparent manner,” Chris Rocheleau, acting administrator of the FAA, said. “Both the airport as well as the airlines are going to have strong feelings about what they need to get out of Newark. We will have those conversations and make those decisions public.”
United Airlines has been calling on the FAA to re-implement stronger controls on the rate of arrivals and departures at Newark, where it operates a major hub.
On Monday night, United sent a letter to customers and a video message about pilot training, in an effort to reassure passengers that flights in and out of Newark remain safe, despite the current air traffic control issues.
"It is absolutely safe to fly," Capt. Miles Morgan, managing director of United's flight training center, said in the video. "There are incredibly skilled teams at both United and the FAA looking after you and your flight."
According to Duffy and Rocheleau, officials from most airlines that have flights out of Newark are expected to attend the meeting Wednesday. United Airlines officials have already voluntarily removed 35 daily round-trip flights from their schedule in Newark, but Duffy said it's possible more cuts could come to schedules across operators there.
“What we’re doing is guaranteeing safety. When you have problems, you actually slow things down. That’s what we’re doing, we’ve slowed down the flights at Newark," he said.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for Paste BN. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.