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US air safety regulators said they will upgrade equipment guiding flights into Newark Liberty International Airport after a reported radar and radio communications shutdown, endangering travellers and crew flying into the busy hub.
Hundreds of flights at the New Jersey airport, the anchor for United Airlines in the New York metro area, have been cancelled or delayed since the April 28 incident.
Though the outage did not cause an accident, the Federal Aviation Administration has slowed arrivals and departures at the airport. The FAA said it plans to make Newark’s operations more reliable by “accelerating technological and logistical improvements and increasing air traffic controller staffing”.
The agency said it would add three new high-bandwidth telecommunications connections linking Newark airport’s radar data to the Philadelphia air traffic control facility that directs the flights approaching the New Jersey airport.
It also plans to replace copper telecommunications connections with fibre optic technology and increase the number of air traffic controllers at the Philadelphia facility.
The FAA also said it would increase staffing at the facility, which has 22 fully certified air traffic controllers. Understaffing has plagued US air traffic control for years.
Since the incident affecting Newark, some air traffic controllers at the Philadelphia facility have taken a leave of absence under a programme covering “all federal employees that are physically injured or experience a traumatic event on the job”, said the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents controllers.
The union noted that during the incident, controllers were “unable to see, hear or talk to” the aircraft under their control.
Though it is in New Jersey, Newark’s proximity to Manhattan makes it a key gateway for New York City. Newark represents about 6 per cent of all the seats flown in the US, said Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu.
United operates about three-quarters of the airport’s flights, or roughly 328 flights a day.
In prepared comments, United chief executive Scott Kirby said on Friday it would cut 35 flights a day from the airport because “we feel like there is no other choice in order to protect our customers”.
“This particular air traffic control facility has been chronically understaffed for years,” he said. “Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead.”
For the first three weeks of April, on average 80 per cent of the flights departing Newark each day left on time, according to aviation data provider Cirium. From April 28 to Tuesday, only 61 per cent did.
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