BOSTON — By late Monday, the ripple effect from the latest radar failure at Newark’s Liberty International Airport began to ebb at Logan Airport — with three flights arriving from 30 to 90 minutes behind schedule.
Other passengers weren’t so lucky. By midday, more than 80 flights had been cancelled out of Newark and another 110 delayed.
Newark’s radar issues began on April 28 when screens essentially went blank for about 90 seconds — sending air traffic controllers into a panic. A similar thing happened again last Friday and then a third time on Sunday.
“It’s frightening to hear that,” said Brian Prescott, after arriving in Boston from Dallas/Fort Worth. “It makes me very concerned. I know my wife, every time I leave the house to go check-in for a flight, she’s very concerned about that. It’s scary.”
United Airlines CEO, Scott Kirby, said in a letter on the airline’s website that Newark Liberty is a safe airport but that the FAA has allowed it to run over capacity. Kirby said the airport can only handle 77 flights an hour max, but that the FAA has allowed 80+ hourly flights.
Until 2016, Newark was a slot-restricted airport, meaning the FAA capped the number of flights per hour. But as a reward for better on-time performance, those restrictions were lifted. (JFK, Reagan National and LaGuardia remain slot-restricted.)
Kirby favors a return to slot restrictions at Newark Liberty, which serves as United’s European hub and its largest hub on the east coast, with more than 146,000 flights in 2024. United controls about 77% of flights out of Liberty. Kirby called the airport a ‘gem,’ but passengers haven’t always seen it that way.
“I didn’t plan on traveling to Newark even before the power outages,” said Britany Parmelee, arriving at Logan Airport from Austin. “I’ve always heard awful things about it.”
Making Liberty’s radar problem more awful is the fact that the airport’s main departure runway is under repair — and will be out of service until mid-June — and the fact that rattled air traffic controllers walked off the job after the last two radar incidents because of mental stress. They may not return for some time.
“I’d love to know what’s the problem behind the problem,” said Jeff Tyner, also arriving to Boston from Austin. “I mean, is it just old technology that’s going out or is it a people problem?”
The Trump administration suggests it’s both. It’s proposing a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the air traffic control system and the hiring of more controllers. Of course, that won’t happen overnight, and, in the meantime, highly trained air traffic controllers are retiring — which they can do at the age of 50.
Controller jobs have long been known to be stressful, with thousands of lives on the line at any given moment — and training can take some time.
Tyner said the investment is worth it.
“I would want to know that we’re using the best technology and that we’re paying people right,” he said.
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