Operations at Newark Liberty International Airport were briefly disrupted Sunday morning due to a telecommunications failure at a nearby air traffic control center. This marks yet another incident in a recent string of outages affecting one of the nation's busiest airports. At the same time, in an unrelated incident, issues with runway equipment caused delays and a ground stop ordered in Atlanta.
At Newark, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that a telecommunications issue stemmed from Philadelphia TRACON Area C, one of the facilities responsible for directing aircraft in and out of Newark’s airspace. As a precaution, the FAA imposed a temporary ground stop, halting flights bound for Newark from taking off elsewhere in the country.
“There was a telecommunications issue at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace,” the FAA said in a statement obtained by CNN. “The FAA briefly slowed aircraft in and out of the airport while we ensured redundancies were working as designed.”
The ground stop lasted for roughly 45 minutes, according to FAA air traffic advisories. While flight activity has since resumed, the incident contributed to a significant number of delays and cancellations. As of 11:00 a.m. Sunday, flight tracking service FlightAware reported 67 delays and 79 cancellations tied to Newark. No inbound flights were diverted during the disruption, FlightAware noted.
This latest outage follows a series of recent technical failures at the same Philadelphia-based TRACON facility. Just two days prior, a brief 90-second radar and radio interruption occurred early Friday morning. A more serious incident on April 28 led five air traffic controllers from the facility to take trauma leave, an event that caused over 1,000 flight cancellations.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy assured travelers on Sunday that "it is" safe to fly from Newark Airport. He also indicated that the volume of flights at the airport will be temporarily reduced as it works to resolve the problem. Speaking on NBC’s "Meet the Press", Duffy acknowledged that the air traffic control system is “old” and in need of upgrades, but expressed confidence that the current “glitch” would be resolved in the near future.
“In the next several weeks, we’re going to have this reduced capacity at Newark. I’m convening a meeting of all the airlines that serve Newark, get them to agree on how they’re going to reduce the capacity. So you book, you fly.”
He added, “We are building a new line that goes directly from Newark to the Philly Tracon, which controls the New York airspace,” saying that he anticipates the connection will be completed by summer’s end.
Meanwhile, Sunday morning also saw “runway equipment issues” at the nation’s busiest airport—Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International—causing flight delays and ground stops for almost all inbound flights to Atlanta. According to the New York Post, the FAA said "technicians are working to resolve the issue" after it caused delays in arrivals, starting at around 10:30 a.m.
“An equipment outage at ATL’s Air Traffic Control Tower is currently causing delays for inbound and outbound aircraft. For further details please contact the FAA. In the meantime, we encourage passengers to contact their respective airlines and visit ATL.com for further information on their individual travel itineraries,” an FAA spokesperson said at the time.
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