FAA launches emergency task force to ensure safety flying in and out of Newark

The Federal Aviation Administration is considering temporary flight reductions in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, and it’s launching an emergency task force to ensure safety, among other system upgrades announced by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a press conference on Monday.

Duffy blamed recent telecommunications issues at Newark Liberty International Airport on former President Joe Biden’s administration, claiming that it mishandled a move of air traffic control from New York to Philadelphia in 2024.

He said that the administration had moved the terminal radar approach control, or TRACON, “without properly hardening the telecom lines feeding the data.”

“Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden did nothing to fix this system that they knew was broken,” he said, casting blame on his predecessor under Biden.

“Without addressing the underlying infrastructure, they added more risk to the system,” he added.

Duffy’s allegations come after an equipment issue on Sunday prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to order a 45-minute ground stop at the New Jersey airport.

However, Duffy claimed that the issue did not technically result in an outage — because the FAA had just performed a software update on the backup system on Friday night to prevent future outages.

“The software patch was successful, and our redundant lines are now both working,” he said, confirming that the main line went down on Sunday — but the backup line did not.

It was only out of “an abundance of caution” that traffic controllers shut down the airspace for 45 minutes on Sunday, Duffy explained.

Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau also appeared at the press conference on Monday and announced that the agency was launching an emergency task force to ensure that travel in and out of Newark remains safe and efficient.

The task force comprises experts from the FAA, Verizon and L3Harris — an FAA contractor that purports to focus on “advanced defense and commercial technologies.”

Sunday’s incident marks the fourth time in the past two weeks that technical problems have disrupted air traffic at Newark.

Duffy also noted that the telecoms system’s age contributed to recent issues.

“The system is so old that even when you have high-speed fiber information coming in … the information has to be slowed down, it comes in too fast,” Duffy said, saying that the information could only travel at “the speed of copper wires.”

For that reason he said that the FAA has replaced copper lines with fiber lines at Newark, along with New York City’s LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The new lines are currently being tested, he said, and the agency hopes to make the switch and have them fully operational by the end of May.

“The goal is to add three new telecommunications lines between New York and Philadelphia,” Duffy added. “This will provide more high-speed reliability and redundancy — so if one goes down, we’re assured that the others will stand up.”

Additionally, the FAA will be meeting with airlines on Wednesday to discuss potential flight reductions at the Newark, he said, echoing an announcement made last week by the FAA. The move would be an effort to reduce ongoing flight delays to and from the airport.

During the meeting, the airlines will confidentially propose flight cuts to the agency based on the congested timeframes identified by the FAA.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby announced on May 2 that the airline was “unilaterally” cutting 35 daily roundtrips from its Newark schedule after several air traffic controllers went on medical leave following the April 28 outage. Newark often has 80 or more flights per hour, Kirby noted in the statement, calling the number unsustainable.

If approved, flight reductions are expected to stay in effect all summer. A final decision will be made after the meeting, and the order will be submitted to the Federal Register by the FAA.

Duffy said that the FAA is closely working with Verizon and L3Harris to determine the underlying cause of the recurring telecommunications issues and address them in an expedited manner.

He also said that he is asking the Office of Inspector General to conduct an investigation into decisions made by the last administration that might be linked to recent equipment failures.

Rocheleau reiterated that traveling in and out of Newark remains safe, and the task force will continue to monitor the upgrades announced by Duffy.