Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy held an impromptu press conference Monday afternoon to address recurrent air traffic control issues at Newark Liberty International Airport and broader technology issues throughout the FAA.
Duffy started by outlining how Newark’s system got to this point, what’s currently happening at that airport, which has had a cluster of incidents in which ATCs were unable to see aircraft on radar screens, and what his department is doing to ensure safety in both the short and long term.
What Led to Newark’s ATC Issues?
Duffy explained:
In July of 2024, the Biden/Buttigieg FAA moved control of the New York/Newark airspace from New York, also known as N90, to Philadelphia Tower, or the Philadelphia TRACON [Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility].
As part of the move, the STARS [Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System] system that processes radar data for Newark remained based in New York City. They didn’t move it from New York down to Philly, where the controllers would be. Redundant and diverse telecommunications lines feed this data from New York to Philadelphia TRACON, where controllers handle New York arrivals and departures.
The Biden/Buttigieg bungled this move without properly hardening the telecom lines feeding the data, which was already well known to be error-prone. Without addressing the underlying infrastructure, they added more risk to the system. In fact, there were issues in October and November under Biden and Buttigieg that would have highlighted to the prior Administration that the underlying hardware would continue to cause problems.
Many of us have worked with outdated technology or tech that’s been held together with patches, and one of the top cautions in such an environment is to change as little as possible. So, even simply moving that control to Philadelphia Tower without it being part of an entire tech overhaul was incompetent at best. Moving it without at least hardening those telecom lines was a prelude to failure that any halfway intelligent person could have seen coming a mile away.
A Recap of Newark’s Recent ATC Issues
Newark experienced serious issues with radar outages on April 28 and May 9, and there was a 45-minute ground stop due to radar issues on May 11. Duffy explained what happened on April 28 and May 9:
The incidents on April 28th and May 9th resulted in very brief outages that impacted the STARS radar data displays going down. The most serious of these outages lasted approximately 30 seconds. This includes the STARS radar data displays going down, again, for 30 seconds. The STARS displays took approximately 60 seconds, then, to reboot and come back online.
So there’s been some discrepancy, 30 seconds versus 90 seconds.
The outage was 30 seconds, but then the displays took another minute to boot. That’s where you get 30 and 90 seconds, but the telecom was out for 30 seconds.
The outage also interrupted the phone line and radio frequencies for a very short period. This is how controllers talk to pilots….These frequencies returned almost immediately, which is why you heard pilots actually telling airplanes that they couldn’t see them with the radar.
What happened on May 11 was actually progress, though, according to Duffy:
On Friday night [May 8] the FAA implemented a software update to prevent future outages. The software patch was successful, and our redundant lines are now both working. We know this because on Sunday there was an outage — you all reported on that — and the outage was — the main line went down, but the redundant line did stand up, meaning our patch, our fix worked.
Now…the controllers who had seen this the prior two times, when they saw the main line go down, they were concerned. Even though they could see airplanes and talk to airplanes, out of an abundance of caution they actually shut down the airspace for 45 minutes, but we still had our scopes and our telecom functioning on Sunday morning.
That sure sounds like a reasonable thing for an air traffic controller to do in that situation, and it was a great validation of the tech work that was done and that will need to be done all over the country.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The FAA is taking a number of actions to fix the problem, from short-term to long-term. First, Duffy said he has asked the Office of the Inspector General to look into that July 2024 move of the TRACON from New York to Philadelphia and what was and was not done to harden the telecom lines and why.
Next, Duffy announced that the “FAA has replaced copper lines with fiber lines at Newark, JFK, and LaGuardia” over the last few weeks, but that there is still a week or two of testing to be done before they can “flip the switch” and go live. This is crucial work because, as Duffy explained:
“This system is so old that even if you have high-speed fiber information coming into a TRACON or a tower, the equipment that we use is so old the information has to be slowed down. It comes in too fast. It has to go at the speed of copper wires.”
In addition, the FAA plans to add three additional fiber telecom lines between New York and Philadelphia, then “establish a STARS hub at the Philadelphia TRACON, so the Philadelphia facility doesn’t have to pull that data from New York.” Duffy said that the FAA is also deploying a temporary backup system at the Philadelphia TRACON while this work is ongoing, to provide redundancy in case of a glitch during the work.
Eventually, the FAA wants to replace all of the copper lines in the network with fiber and replace other outdated tech system-wide. Duffy says, “Our hope is to have high-speed fiber connections and then new technology in these towers and TRACONs and centers so we can maximize the use of American airspace.”
Until things level out, Duffy says there needs to be a reduction of flights going in and out of Newark:
“Using statutory authority I have as the Secretary of Transportation, the D.O.T will convene a delay reduction meeting this Wednesday with all airlines who have flights at Newark. The goal is to have a manageable number of flights land at Newark. Families shouldn’t have to wait four or five hours for a flight that never takes off. By lowering the number of flights, we can ensure the ones that are kept, they do actually take off, and they do actually land.”
Many of these steps are Newark-specific, but Duffy emphasized that these fixes and upgrades need to happen across the country and can only happen if Congress approves President Trump’s plan to modernize the air traffic control system.
“Our commitment is always safety to you. We’re going to make sure that if you fly, you’re going to fly safely.”
You can watch Duffy’s full press conference below.
WATCH: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Press Conference – 5/12/25 pic.twitter.com/eLxp6zX6hg
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) May 12, 2025
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