Software update keeps Newark airport radar online but network concerns and flight limits remain

A new software update prevented a third radar outage in the last two weeks at New Jersey’s busy Newark airport when a telecommunications line failed again over the weekend, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday.

At a news conference, Duffy also said the recent problems that have led to hundreds of cancellations and delays in Newark could have been avoided had action been taken by President Joe Biden’s administration to better equip the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia — particularly after issues with the hardware in October and November that should have set off alarms.

Duffy said the update the Federal Aviation Administration installed Friday night helped ensure the backup system worked on Sunday when there was another problem with the primary line coming into the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia. When a similar issue happened Friday and on April 28, the radar and communications systems went offline briefly, leaving controllers unable to see or talk to the planes.

The FAA restricted traffic into Newark Liberty International Airport after the first incident, partly because several air traffic controllers went out on trauma leave afterward, worsening the already short staffing. Those limits, designed to keep flights safe, combined with an ongoing runway construction project in Newark, led to all the cancellations and delays. Later this week, the FAA will meet with all the airlines to discuss making those limits last into the summer.

Even though the radar system stayed online Sunday, controllers were worried because of the two previous outages, so Duffy said they stopped all traffic at Newark airport for about 45 minutes as a precaution.

Duffy said he will request an investigation into last year’s move of Newark air traffic controllers from New York to Philadelphia to determine why more wasn’t done to ensure there wouldn’t be problems. Philadelphia is about 85 miles (137 kilometers) southwest of Newark.

“The Biden-Buttigieg FAA bungled this move without properly hardening the telecom lines feeding the data, which was already well-known to be error-prone,” Duffy said. “Without addressing the underlying infrastructure, they added more risk to the system.”

Duffy also said the FAA should have set up a new radar system for Newark in Philadelphia instead of piping the signal in from New York for controllers.

Duffy and President Donald Trump have said that the problems in Newark are a prime example of why they developed a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul that nation’s air traffic control system, unveiled last week. Duffy blames the Biden administration for failing to do that, but those problems go back decades, even before the first Trump administration.

An advisor to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Duffy should spend more time trying to deal with the nation’s problems, and he defended the Biden administration’s efforts to bolster air traffic controller hiring and make a down payment on dealing with some of the infrastructure problems.

“Secretary Duffy has a tough job. But he needs to spend more time doing what the American people are paying him to do — fix problems — and less time blaming others,” said Chris Meagher.

Duffy laid out an extensive plan to replace the nation’s outdated air traffic control system last week, including installing 4,600 new high-speed data connections and replacing 618 radars, but didn’t put a price tag on the plan other than to say it will cost billions.

The FAA has installed new fiber optic lines at Newark airport and New York’s Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports to replace old copper wires since the first outage, but plans to spend the next two weeks testing those new lines out before switching over to them.