By Andrew Tangel

At about 1:30 in the afternoon on April 28, air-traffic controllers overseeing the busy airspace around Newark Liberty International Airport suddenly faced a frightening scenario.

The chatter from pilots they were communicating with went silent. Radar screens filled with dots showing aircraft positions went dark. Backup systems failed. Planes bound for the area went into holding patterns.

About 90 seconds later, the traffic-control systems started blinking back to life. But problems lingered with the radar, and controllers worried the radios would go out again.

"We don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are," a controller told United Airlines Flight 674 arriving from Charleston, S.C., instructing its crew to watch out for other planes without controllers' help.

Another controller offered a warning to a private plane: "I want to at least get you towards something and clear of all the other aircraft in case we lose the frequency again."

There were no crashes, but scores of flights coming and going were delayed for hours, and dozens scheduled to arrive in Newark were diverted to other airports.

The controllers who oversee Newark airspace from the Federal Aviation Administration's thinly staffed facility in Philadelphia were rattled. Four left the facility that day and sought short-term, trauma-related leave, according to people familiar with the situation.

Days later, the controllers' radios briefly went out again, further scrambling operations in Newark and air travel elsewhere.

America's air-traffic control system has been troubled for years, the culmination of years of anemic funding, archaic technology and staffing problems. A wake-up call sounded on Jan. 29 with a midair collision near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people. President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have pledged to overhaul the system.

"If we don't take aggressive action, you're going to see [tech problems] in other places," Duffy said in an interview after visiting the Philadelphia facility on Friday. "I don't want to see that happen."

The Government Accountability Office said last year that about three-quarters of the FAA's 138 air-traffic systems were either obsolete or potentially too difficult to reliably maintain. Duffy said he is preparing to unveil a plan this week to upgrade the FAA's network of facilities, radars and other technology, which industry and government officials believe could cost $20 billion to $40 billion.

Troubling incidents

Since the Jan. 29 crash, the FAA has been examining the design of routes around busy airports. There was a slim margin for error between helicopter and airplane routes at Reagan National.

In other incidents, missteps by controllers or pilots have put aircraft on collision courses. Key technology also has been unreliable. In early 2023, the malfunctioning of a system that distributes pilot safety notices prompted the first nationwide groundstop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

FAA officials said they would slow down air travel to maintain safety. After last week's outages, the agency cut traffic flows into Newark. "If there's some issues with equipment, we're going to slow things down or we're going to shut things down," Duffy said. "Because though I want an incredibly efficient airspace, when I'm confronted with safety, safety is always paramount."

Industry and government officials have studied data and suggested fixes to address close calls, but the ingredients for a catastrophe involving air-traffic control remained.

Investigators looking into the January collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet preparing to land at Washington's Reagan are examining why one controller was juggling both helicopter and airplane traffic, despite an FAA policy to have a stand-alone controller focused on choppers at that time of day. The FAA has since closed the route used by the helicopter to most traffic. Investigators are also examining the roles of pilots and other factors in the accident.

Tensions have remained high at Reagan National's control tower. In late March, a controller running the Reagan tower punched another controller after he refused to monitor helicopter traffic, according to people briefed on the exchange.

Airport police issued a misdemeanor summons for assault and battery to a 39-year-old controller. Local authorities declined to comment on the case.

The nation's aviation system handles some 45,000 commercial, private and military flights a day. Air-traffic control facilities oversee civilian airspace, dividing the skies by geography and altitude. Tracking aircraft on radar scopes, controllers tell pilots where to turn, when to descend or climb and how fast to fly.

The FAA has some 10,700 fully certified controllers, leaving it about 3,000 short of its target. Controllers have complained of fatigue from often having to work 10-hour days, six days a week as a result.

Threatening to make the shortage worse, about 500 controllers are eligible to retire and begin receiving federal pensions. The FAA has set a mandatory retirement age for controllers at 56. Last week, Duffy announced 20% bonuses for retirement-eligible controllers each year they stay on the job. Controllers have been exempt from Trump's cuts to the federal workforce.

During a February visit by Duffy to the FAA's air-traffic academy in Oklahoma City, one student told him: "It's a lot of work, it's a lot of stress. You've got to be ready for that commitment...It's like a full two-year degree in four months."

Duffy has announced a 30% pay boost to nearly $23 an hour for students at the academy and other changes aimed at attracting controller candidates. Entry-level pay for graduates is around $47,000, according to the FAA, although it is higher in many metropolitan areas. Median pay for air-traffic controllers is around $145,000 a year, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. The FAA said recruiting efforts are showing signs of paying off.

Problem region

The agency has struggled for years to shore up staffing at one important New York facility. Last year, the agency shifted oversight of airspace around Newark's airport to Philadelphia from Long Island, N.Y. It hoped the move would help attract and retain more controllers.

The setup in Philadelphia wasn't a full-fledged, air-traffic control operation. Its radar depended on a relay from the primary facility more than 100 miles away on Long Island. The FAA said Monday it was working to make telecommunications equipment in the New York area more reliable and resilient, and expects to complete a permanent fix this year.

Controllers have faced a series of tech problems that have snarled air traffic and risked safety. Staffing levels haven't improved significantly, and absences due to trauma leave have only added to the workload. The FAA said it has several trainees who will be able to supplement staffing.

On Nov. 6, a controller was guiding a FedEx cargo plane to land at Newark's airport when the main and backup air-traffic control radios went dead. Cut off from controllers, the Boeing 767 blew past Newark and flew over the Hudson River and Manhattan and into traffic lanes for planes flying into and out of LaGuardia Airport in Queens. FedEx said its crew complied with controller instructions and landed safely.

Officials scrambled to figure out how the air-traffic communications outage was playing out across the Northeast, according to audio of recorded phone calls released by the FAA in response to a public records request by The Wall Street Journal.

"All the landlines lit up and were just, like, going nuts, and then we lost frequencies. Nobody could talk to anybody," one official told his counterpart in one call that evening. "We sterilized the airspace...We stopped everything."

Disaster was averted, but the outage affected several of FAA facilities in the Northeast. The FAA traced the failure to a "multiplexer box" at a New York facility, according to records obtained by the Journal. The component had reached the end of its life cycle and was due to be replaced a couple of hours before the failure, according to a Nov. 8 email from an FAA manager.

Already thin staffing at the Philadelphia facility overseeing Newark was further depleted when some of its controllers opted to take so-called trauma leave from their jobs.

"Our staffing is in dire straits -- it's awful -- not safe or efficient in any way," one controller who handles Newark air traffic said in an interview. "It's a crisis and the public doesn't know about it...It's happening here at Newark and nobody wants to pay attention until lives are lost."

He described the April 28 radar and radio outage as the most stressful situation of his career.

The chaos at Newark that day stretched across the country. A United flight from San Francisco was forced to divert to Bradley airport in Hartford, Conn., after circling over western Pennsylvania for nearly an hour. The airline said it diverted 37 flights and canceled about 100 more. At Newark, flights that day were delayed in many cases by four hours or more.

Duffy said FAA officials are working with telecommunications companies to diagnose and fix what caused the outage. "We are putting some Band-Aids on some really old systems," he said, calling for a "complete program to overhaul to make it brand new."

Pressing problems

The FAA uses most of its technology and equipment funding to sustain equipment that in some cases dates to the 1950s, a senior agency official said. Many facilities are connected by copper-wire landlines, which are at risk of failing or being shut down before the FAA can replace them with fiber-optic connections.

Each week, the system suffers about 700 communications outages, according to the senior FAA official.

Some operating practices are dated. In many air-traffic facilities, controllers rely on paper printouts called flight strips for help in tracking flights. They pass the strips to one another, conveying new information like route changes verbally and by writing it down. An electronic system now exists, but cost increases and delays have slowed a broader rollout.

"These things keep us from what we should be doing -- seeing, looking, making decisions and constantly giving all of our attention to the aircraft," said Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

Elon Musk dispatched engineers from his rocket company, SpaceX, to study and suggest fixes to the FAA's technology. Transportation Department officials say Musk's Starlink satellite-internet network could be part of a broader solution, such as a potential backup for communications between facilities.

Some of what the SpaceX team told FAA officials the agency already knew. "They said, 'Oh, you need to move off of your telecommunications network ASAP,'" recalled the senior FAA official.

Last September, the Biden administration asked Congress for $8 billion in additional funding over five years to make improvements, including replacing air-traffic control facilities and modernizing radar systems. Lawmakers didn't act on the request -- the latest chapter in a yearslong battle between aviation officials and politicians over how to improve air safety. A House spending bill this year has allocated $12.5 billion for upgrades.

Duffy said Trump's backing will help his overhaul succeed where others have failed, and that he doesn't anticipate much pushback from Congress. "They're going to have to work on how they find the resources to do this project," he said. "But I have faith that they'll figure it out."

Last Thursday, near Reagan airport, an Army helicopter traveling to the Pentagon came within a half-mile horizontally and a few hundred feet vertically of a Delta Air Lines regional jet, according to a preliminary internal FAA document and a person familiar with the matter.

The regional airline operating the flight said it would assist with a probe into the event. The Army has paused flights around the Pentagon pending a review of the incident, an Army official said.

On Monday, after an apparent close call involving two small planes near Newark the previous day, a controller filed an internal safety report, which was reviewed by the Journal.

"The situation is, has been and continues to be unsafe, and it is only a matter of time until a lot of people die," the controller wrote. "The equipment is unsafe to use, and unusable -- both [communications] and radar. The amount of stress we are under is insurmountable."

The FAA said it is is investigating the Sunday event, and that it takes all safety reports seriously and takes necessary action.

Write to Andrew Tangel at andrew.tangel@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 05, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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