Air traffic controllers at Newark’s Liberty airport lost contact with planes for 30 seconds last week, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed.
“The primary communication line went down, and the backup line didn’t fire, so for 30 seconds we lost contact with air traffic,” Duffy told Fox News.
A power outage at the New Jersey airport caused flights to and from the airport to be affected, causing departing flights to be held while airborne flights were either held or diverted. The outage at Newark caused air traffic control computer screens to go dark for roughly 60 to 90 seconds.
“Were planes going to crash? No, they have communication devices, but it is a sign that we have a frail system in place, and it has to be fixed.” Duffy added.
The US Transportation Secretary also confirmed that there will be less departures out of the airport until the Department of Transportation (DOT) is comfortable that the system isn’t going to go down again. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association also confirmed that air traffic controllers in Philadelphia responsible for coordinating planes in Newark, temporarily lost radar contact and communications with the aircraft under their control on April 28, 2025.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on May 5, 2025, that frequent equipment and telecommunications outages have caused some controllers in Philadelphia who work on Newark arrivals and departures have taken time off to “recover from the stress” of multiple recent outages.
Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, the carrier which operates the most flights out of Newark, addressed recent equipment malfunctions stating: “To minimise the impact that this will have on customers, we are unilaterally cancelling 35 roundtrip flights per day from our Newark schedule. Unfortunately, the technology issues were compounded as over 20% of the FAA controllers for Newark walked off the job.”
Duffy said he plans to release plans on May 8, 2025, to seek billions of dollars from Congress to reform air traffic control infrastructure and staffing.