A new software update prevents a third radar fault in the busy Newark Airport of New Jersey in the past two weeks when a telecommunications line again failed at the weekend, said transport secretary Sean Duffy Monday.
During a press conference, Duffy also said that the recent problems that led to hundreds of cancellations and delays in Newark could have been avoided if President Joe Biden’s administration was undertaken to better rest the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia – especially after issues with the hardware in October and November.
The delays continued on Monday evening at Newark Liberty International Airport with average back -ups of more than 1 1/2 hours. This time it was not caused by technical failures, but a shortage of air traffic controllers who were made even worse because several of them were leave after the first radar disturbance under a 45-day trauma leave, said spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration Kristen as op.
De FAA had already limited the traffic to Newark after the first incident due to the staff shortages. Those limits, designed to keep flights safe, combined with a continuous landing job construction project in Newark, have created persistent cancellation and delays. Later this week the FAA will meet all airlines to discuss that these limits take it in the summer.
Duffy said that the update of the Federal Aviation Administration that was installed on Friday evening ensured that the back -up system worked on Sunday when there was still a problem with the primary line that entered the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia. When a similar problem happened on Friday and 28 April, the radar and communication systems briefly went offline, so that controllers could not see or talk the planes.
Although the radar system remained online on Sunday, the controllers were worried because of the two previous disruptions, so Duffy said they had stopped all the traffic on Newark Airport for about 45 minutes as a precaution.
Duffy said he will request an investigation into the relocation of Newark Air Traffic Controllers from Newark from New York to Philadelphia to determine why it was no longer done to ensure that there would be no problems. Philadelphia is approximately 85 miles (137 kilometers) southwest of Newark.
“The Biden-Buttigieg-faa bunged this movement without properly hardening the telecom lines that fed the data, which was already known as error-sensitive,” Duffy said. “Without tackling the underlying infrastructure, they added more risk to the system.”
Duffy also said that the FAA should have set up a new radar system for Newark in Philadelphia instead of leading the signal from New York to controllers.
Duffy and President Donald Trump have said that the problems in Newark are a good example of why they have developed a plan of millions of dollars to revise the nation’s air traffic control system last week. Duffy blames the Biden administration for not doing that, but those problems go dozens of years ago, even before the first Trump administration.
A consultant from former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg said that Duffy should spend more time trying to tackle the problems of the nation, and he defended the efforts of the Biden administration to strengthen the hiring of the air traffic controller and making a down payment for dealing with some of the infrastructure problems.
“Secretary Duffy has a tough job. But he has to spend more time doing what the American people pays – solving problems – and less time accusing others,” said Chris Meagher.
Duffy drawn up an extensive plan last week to replace the outdated air traffic control system of the nation, including installing 4,600 new high-speed data connections and replacing 618 radars, but has placed no other price tag on the plan than to say it costs billions.
The FAA has installed new fiber optic lines on Newark Airport and the Airports Kennedy International and Laguardia in New York to replace old copper threads since the first outages, but is planning to spend the next two weeks testing those new lines before they switch to them.
