Another issue disrupts Newark’s airport as Trump’s transportation secretary plans reducing flights

AP Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy plans to reduce the number of flights in and out of the Newark Liberty International Airport for the next several weeks as New Jersey s largest airport struggles with radar outages and other issues including one Sunday and flight delays and cancellations due to a shortage of air traffic controllers Speaking on NBC s Meet the Press Duffy declared he will convene a meeting with all the airlines flying out of Newark this week to determine the reduction adding that it will fluctuate with a larger reduction coming in the afternoons when international flight arrivals make the airport busier We want to have a number of flights that if you book your flight you know it s going to fly right he declared That is the priority So you don t get to the airport wait four hours and then get delayed The Federal Aviation Administration released a telecommunications issue on Sunday at the facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of Newark airport The agency declared in a declaration that it briefly slowed aircraft in and out of the airport while ensuring that redundancies were working as designed Operations then returned to normal That issue emerged two days after radar at the facility in Philadelphia went black for seconds at a m Friday an episode that was similar to an occurrence on April The FAA explained in a comment last week that it slows the rate of arrivals into Newark to ensure safety when staffing or equipment issues occur The agency noted that frequent equipment and telecommunications outages can be stressful prompting specific air traffic controllers to take time off to recover from the stress While we cannot hastily replace them due to this highly specialized profession we continue to train controllers who will eventually be assigned to this busy airspace the FAA reported in a May announcement There has been an average of arrival cancellations per day since mid-April at Newark according to the FAA with the number of delays increasing throughout the day from an average of five in the mornings to by the evening They tend to last to minutes on average The Trump administration proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the U S air traffic control system Thursday that includes six new air traffic control centers and mechanism and communications upgrades at all of the nation s air traffic facilities over the next three or four years Duffy disclosed Sunday that he also plans to raise the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers from to as he tries to confront a shortage of about people in that specialized position He plans to give those air traffic controllers a upfront bonus to stay on the job However he says a multitude of air traffic controllers choose to retire after years of provision which means plenty of retire around the age of These are not overnight fixes Duffy revealed But as we go up one two years older guys on the job younger guys coming in men and women we can make up that -person difference Adding more air traffic controllers is in contrast to a top priority of the Trump administration slashing jobs in nearly all other federal agencies However United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby stated on CBS Face the Nation that Duffy deserves credit for putting caution tape around FAA safety functions and separating those personnel from DOGE cost-cutting Kirby commented United has already reduced its schedule at Newark and will meet with Duffy later this week He expects a deeper cut in threshold to last until June when construction to one of Newark s runways is expected to be complete though he thinks various reductions will last throughout the summer We have fewer flights but we keep everything safe and we get the airplane safely on the ground Kirby commented Safety is number one and so I m not worried about safety I am worried about customer delays and impacts