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Newark Airport Hit Again by 90-Second Outage Early Friday
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May 9, 2025
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2:00Now PlayingAir traffic controllers guiding planes in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport briefly lost communications and radar displays early Friday morning, the second outage in as many weeks.
The telecommunications breakdown at a Federal Aviation Administration facility in Philadelphia occurred at approximately 3:55 a.m. local time and lasted about 90 seconds, the FAA said in a statement. Controllers at the facility also lost radar and radio on April 28, leaving them unable to see or communicate with crews flying through some of the most congested airspace in the US.
Shortly before 4 a.m. local time on Friday, air traffic controllers alerted a FedEx Corp. aircraft that their “scopes just went black again.”
“If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure from them to fix this stuff,” the controller said, according to a playback of the air-traffic audio.
The pilot of the plane, identified as FedEx 1989, responded with “sorry to hear about that.”
FedEx didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest incident points to ongoing equipment and infrastructure problems at FAA’s operation in Philadelphia that handles traffic into Newark’s airspace. Last week’s outage and a staffing crunch contributed several days of disruptions at the busy hub. As a result, hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, prompting United Airlines Holdings Inc. to begin cutting 35 daily round trips at the airport, its biggest for international departures.
The FAA on Wednesday said it would install a temporary backup system at the Philadelphia facility for redundancy while accelerating work to upgrade communications infrastructure at the site, including the replacement of older copper wires with fiber optic lines.
Bloomberg's George Ferguson reports.
Breakdowns at Newark have intensified scrutiny on the broader state of air traffic control, critical infrastructure to ensure the safety of some 45,000 US flights carrying nearly 3 million people each day. The FAA has said its towers are about 40 years old on average and the majority of its radar were nearing the same age. Outdated technology such as floppy disks and paper strips are commonplace.
The US Government Accountability Office said in December that the FAA needed to take urgent action to update its systems, citing a 2023 risk assessment found 76% were either unsustainable or potentially unsustainable.
Watchdogs and airlines alike have long warned the issues are growing more serious and could lead to more travel disruptions, or at worst put safety of the flying public at risk.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday announced a sweeping plan to upgrade air traffic control systems across the country over the next three to four years.
The Friday outage was reported earlier by ABC News.
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