Another troubling incident occurred early Friday at the air traffic control facility that covers Newark airport, where old copper phone lines were blamed for a breakdown in communications last week. Authorities say radar screens went black for around 90 seconds, starting at 3:55am, NBC News reports. "There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace," the FAA said. ABC News reports that controllers could be heard telling a FedEx plane that the screen had gone dark—and asking for help getting the issue fixed.
"FedEx 1989, I'm going to hand you off here, our scopes just went black again," a controller said, per the New York Times. "If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff." The pilot replied: "Sorry to hear about that." Several controllers went on medical leave after the April 28 outage, in which they were unable to communicate with pilots for up to 90 seconds. The communications breakdown and staffing shortages led to days of major delays at the airport, one of the nation's busiest. According to an internal report seen by CNN, FAA experts put the odds of a communication failure at 11 million to 1 before controllers were shifted to the Philadelphia facility last year.
According to FlightAware, around 25% of flights departing and arriving at Newark were delayed Monday, with another 10% canceled. At a news conference Thursday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, joined by airline CEOs, said the administration could modernize air traffic control facilities across the nation in three or four years if Congress approves "lots of billions" in funding upfront, the Wall Street Journal reports. Duffy said some of the equipment in use today looks like it should be in the Smithsonian or the set of Apollo 13. "If we don't actually accomplish the mission that we're announcing today … you'll see Newarks in other parts of the country," he warned. (More Newark airport stories.)
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