Aging Air Traffic Control System: The Need for a Complete Rebuild

It will cost billions.

How much, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would not say.

But he did say that the problems that have bedeviled Newark Liberty International Airport in recent weeks — which have led to hundreds of cancelled and delayed flights, frustrated travelers, and one frightening incident after another involving inexplicable failures of the air traffic control system — can only be solved by a complete rebuilding of the nation’s aging and obsolete network.

“We have an antiquated and old air traffic control system anywhere from 25, 35, 40 years old in some places. It is in desperate need of a brand new build,” said Duffy in a press briefing on Wednesday in Washington.

Calling it the most critical infrastructure project in the country, Duffy said the plan was to essentially “gut the (nation’s) air traffic control system and build brand new everything.”

He acknowledged it will take a substantial amount of money.

“We have the plan. We are ready to go. We just need the Congress to step up,” he said. “I’m concerned that we could have more of Newarks.”

The problems of Newark, though, have ranged well beyond the well-documented radio and radar failures in the air traffic control system that caused some frightening moments in the sky. They have included the loss of a main runway that led to the Federal Aviation Administration curtailing hourly flight operations, as well as a shortage of controllers handling the airport’s busy airspace.

The communications problems have been blamed on the decision last year to relocate controllers working Newark’s air space from a facility in Westbury, N.Y., to the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control center, or TRACON.

That move was aimed at addressing the shortage of staffers in Westbury. But in making relocating the controllers, the FAA left the radars and radar processing facility in New York. They then connected the Philadelphia TRACON to Westbury via a vulnerable copper data cable with no backup which failed in spectacular fashion on April 28, blacking out radars and radio frequencies for 90 seconds.

Duffy, in his briefing, said Verizon has worked quickly to install a new fiber optic data line between Philadelphia and New York over the past month.

“We’re doing some of the connections right now and then we have to test it,” he said. “If it all goes well, we should be able to turn over to this new fiber line at the start of July.”

He also said the runway repair work appeared ahead of schedule.

Newark has three runways. Its twin main runways are long parallel tracts known as 4L/22R and 4R/22L, which typically handle most of the inbound and outbound traffic. A far shorter east-west Runway 11/29. One of the major runways was shut down in April for a three-month, $121 million upgrade project.

Duffy said the Port Authority has been working seven days a week to make sure that runway is work is finished by the projected June 15 completion date.

“I think it’s going to be done ahead of time,” he said.

Meanwhile, under an interim order, FAA set the maximum number of flights at the airport be limited to 28 arrivals and 28 departures an hour, until the reconstruction work on the runway is done. During peak times previously, there could be as many as 77 departures and arrivals each hour.

The FAA said that it expects to be able to bump up the number of flights daily in Newark to 34 arrivals and 34 departures once a runway construction project is completed.

As for the shortage of air traffic controllers, he said the problems that led to hundreds of cancellations and delays at Newark have improved since the FAA limited the number of flights at the airport.

“Some have asked, is the airspace safe? Is it safe to travel, to travel by airplane? And the answer to that is absolutely yes,” he said. He attributed that to their slowing things down.

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Ted Sherman may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @TedShermanSL.

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