By Alison Sider and Allison Pohle

For many New York City-area fliers, travel planning starts with a simple question now: How do I avoid Newark?

Staffing shortages, runway construction and radar outages are all prompting more travelers to steer clear of the airport, even those who live practically next door. It hasn't helped that some air-traffic controllers have warned that it is unsafe.

Lina Chen had booked an Air Canada flight out of Newark Liberty International to Japan for July. But when problems started at the New Jersey airport a few weeks ago, the Brooklyn resident became worried.

"The more I read, the more uncertain things were looking," said Chen, who was able to rebook her flight to depart from John F. Kennedy International for no extra charge. "I didn't want to think about it for the next two months."

The level of disruption at Newark has calmed down some in the past week, after a series of technology outages snarled traffic and forced dozens of flights to divert. Thousands of flights at the airport have been delayed this month, and many have been canceled altogether.

A technology patch installed last week averted another upset on Sunday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The FAA has said it is working to add a third telecommunications line between Philadelphia -- where controllers oversee Newark's airspace -- and New York, where its radar data is processed.

Still, even Duffy recently switched his wife to a flight from LaGuardia. He wasn't worried about safety, but delays.

"I needed her flight to fly -- she had to get there," he told a House panel on Wednesday.

Some airlines are allowing travelers to change travel dates or shift plans to fly through nearby airports without paying extra. Customers are taking them up on it.

Reservation agents at Delta Air Lines, which has a relatively small operation at Newark, have been taking calls from travelers concerned about whether their flights would get where they needed to go, Chief Executive Ed Bastian said. More are opting to travel out of LaGuardia and JFK in New York City, he said.

"Certainly, there's a lot of concern about Newark," he said. "People don't know whether the flights are going to be departing on time."

The Newark situation is likely to improve as airlines shrink flight schedules and runway construction wraps up. But fixing broader infrastructure issues could take three to five years.

"You will see incremental improvements over time," Bastian said.

Corporate travelers -- especially those with connections to make -- are rethinking flights to and from Newark, too.

"If our customers can avoid connecting in Newark, they are trying to do that," said Charlene Leiss, president of the Americas at Flight Centre Travel Group. Call volume is up at least 10% since disruptions started, she said.

Stuart Blake, North America vice president of revenue for TravelPerk, said the travel-management company's share of bookings at JFK has climbed 4 percentage points over the past few weeks. The smaller Westchester County Airport nearby is also experiencing fuller flights, according to the company that manages the airport.

No airline has more to lose than United Airlines, which dominates Newark.

In an unusual move this week, CEO Scott Kirby emailed 3.7 million customers with near-term Newark flights, along with members of the airline's loyalty program based in the New York and New Jersey area, offering reassurance that it is safe to fly in and out of the hub.

Before the recent troubles, United said it had a higher rate of on-time arrivals for flights in and out of Newark than overall rates at the other New York-area airports. Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said that the biggest reason fewer passengers are flying through Newark now is that there are fewer flights. United said earlier this month that it would cull about 10% of its schedule there to adjust to a shortfall of air-traffic controllers.

"Newark is perfectly safe," he said. "We just need to make sure everyone has confidence that when they get to the airport, their flight's going to leave and leave on time."

That doesn't make Frank Gunn, who is planning to fly from Newark to Croatia this fall, feel much better. He hasn't changed his October flight because he doesn't want to lose the money. But the prospect of air-traffic radar screens going dark again is hard to put out of his mind.

"It's an opportunity for something incredibly grievous to occur," said Gunn, who lives in Jackson, Miss.

Such worries were enough to prompt Lisa Sidebotham to change her itinerary for a trip with her daughter and a friend from Buffalo, N.Y., to Newark later this month. The trip, to celebrate the youngsters' high-school graduation, would mark her daughter's first flight.

A United agent rebooked them from Buffalo to Washington Dulles, then on to LaGuardia. Though the trip is now twice as long and they are leaving a day earlier than planned, Sidebotham said it is worth it.

"I'd rather not take the chance," she said.

Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com and Allison Pohle at allison.pohle@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 16, 2025 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)

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