Newark Controllers Lose Radar, Radio Contact Again

Air traffic controllers handling flights approaching and departing Newark Liberty International Airport experienced another outage early Friday morning.

The blackout included losing radar for about 90 seconds at 3:55 a.m. local time, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

“There was a telecommunications outage that impacted communications and radar display at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which guides aircraft in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport airspace,” the statement noted.

“FedEx 1989, I’m going to hand you off here. Our scopes just went black again,” an air traffic controller directed a flight that had just taken off, in audio recorded by the website LiveATC.net. “If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff.”

The FedEx plane, bound for Boston, was then directed to contact controllers at a different frequency.

“Sorry to hear about that, FedEx 1989,” the pilot said. “I’m switching, good luck guys.”

The outage is the latest in a series of troubling technical problems that have impacted the air traffic control system in the United States.

In the afternoon of April 28, an outage of radar and communications at the same facility left controllers unable to talk to planes or see where they were located. As CNN previously reported, at least five controllers took 45 days of trauma leave after that incident, leading to a staffing shortage that canceled and delayed more than a thousand flights.

No controllers took leave after the Friday morning outage.

The two incidents are distinctly different in the timing and number of planes impacted.

The Friday morning outage happened when few planes were arriving or departing, while the April 28 incident took place during a busy afternoon with about 16 aircraft being controlled at the time. About half of those flights ended up being diverted to other nearby airports.

As of Friday afternoon there are more than 400 delays and 140 cancellations reported at Newark, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware.

Staffing issues for Newark Terminal Radar Approach Control are noted in the publicly available FAA operations plan for nearly the entire day, and the flow of aircraft is being managed due to “staffing constraints.”

Bad weather, including low clouds, and runway construction are also delaying Newark flights today.

Thursday the Department of Transportation announced an overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system.

“What we’re seeing through the system is, you know, hundreds of times a week, blips in connectivity, which is a sign that you’re seeing issues with your telecom,” Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN after the announcement.