Why U.S. air traffic control is stretched so thin — and the fight to fix it

Air traffic controllers have been under strain for years, but a 90-second equipment failure last week exposed how decades of staffing shortages, underinvestment and patchwork solutions for those who guide planes through some of the world’s most congested airspace are taking their toll.

The outage also sparked hundreds of flight delays, disrupting travel for thousands of travelers for days — again.

On the afternoon of April 28, air traffic controllers at a facility in Philadelphia who are responsible for guiding planes to and from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey faced dark radar screens and were unable to talk to planes for more than a minute.

The outage lasted about 30 seconds. It took another 30 to 60 seconds for aircraft to reappear on radarscopes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Pilots for major U.S. airlines say they are specially trained to handle such outages.

But an outage of even a few seconds “is an eternity for air traffic controllers,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a retired air safety investigator for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA.

The incident, which was not the first time equipment outages hit the facility, was so jarring some have “taken time off to recover from the stress of multiple recent outages,” the FAA said.

More than 1,500 Newark flights were delayed last week, according to FlightAware. United Airlines, which runs a hub out of Newark, said it was cutting 35 flights a day from its schedule to ease strain on its operation and customers.

A Newark runway has also been closed for construction, adding to disruptions.

On Wednesday, the FAA said it would beef up staffing at the Philadelphia facility and work to fix communication lines that feed data to controllers there for Newark flights. It said it plans to install a temporary backup system there to “provide redundancy during the switch to a more reliable fiberoptic network.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is set to announce a major upgrade plan for the U.S. air traffic control system on Thursday, which could require Congress to approve billions in additional funding.

“We have computers, and I kid you not, today in 2025, that are based on Windows 95 and floppy disks,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said in an interview in March.

The FAA last year said that the average age of its towers is 40 and that most radar systems are approaching 40 years old. “Aging facilities add risk to the system, including risk of service disruptions,” it said.

The April 28 incident and previous outages didn’t cause any accidents but the failures raised more worries about an outmoded system and chronic shortages of air traffic controllers, particularly in the busy airspace around New York City.

U.S. air traffic controllers handle about 45,000 flights a day overall, according to the FAA.

The urgency to fix lingering problems reached a new level after a Black Hawk Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines regional jet on Jan. 29, killing all 67 people on board the aircraft. It was the deadliest air crash in the United States since 2001.

“It took a fatal midair airline accident to occur to get everybody’s attention,” Guzzetti said.

Newark is already dealing with space constraints to begin with.

It handled around 414,000 flights last year, 11% fewer than John F. Kennedy International Airport, in Queens, New York, according to data from their operator, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. But Newark is about half JFK’s size.

Technology glitches and staffing shortfalls have been especially hard on Newark in recent days. Last year, the FAA moved controllers who handle Newark from a facility on Long Island, New York — where planes are also sequenced to and from LaGuardia Airport and JFK in Queens — to a remote station in Philadelphia. The move was meant to ease congestion and strain on the Long Island facility, but there are still issues.

Air traffic staffing shortages have vexed airline executives who are eager to capitalize on strong demand but are constrained and face high costs due to a lack of controllers.

“Keep in mind, this particular air traffic control facility has been chronically understaffed for years and without these controllers, it’s now clear — and the FAA tells us — that Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead,” United CEO Scott Kirby told customers on Friday, announcing schedule cuts.

Before April 26, four flights a day were canceled at Newark in April, on average, but that rose to 39 a day through Monday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. About 80% of flights were on schedule in April before that date, but dropped to 63%, “far below industry norms,” Cirium said.

Duffy has said air travel is safe. After a visit to the Philadelphia facility last week, he said that the FAA will slow, if not halt, arrivals altogether if there is a shortage of air traffic controllers.

United’s CEO, Kirby, told employees in a memo Wednesday that flying to and from Newark is safe. He said the carrier’s pilots have thousands of hours of experience and training on procedures to “follow to re-establish communication if controllers lose radio contact to navigate the airplane safely to its destination.”

Airlines have sought capacity limits to help the congestion, and the last disruption was no exception.

“United has been urging the US government for *years* to use its authority to effectively limit the number of flights to what the airport can realistically handle,” Kirby said in a note to employees on Friday. “Past failure to make those changes had led to the circumstances that United and, most importantly, our customers now face.”  

In 2016, the FAA eased flight restrictions at the airport and Kirby said the FAA should return to prior rules.

“It’s long past time to treat EWR like the crown jewel that it is,” he told employees in the Wednesday, using the airport’s code. “We’ll continue to work closely with the FAA and [Transportation Department] to get EWR fixed once and for all and deliver the country the first-class air traffic system it deserves.”

The U.S. has around 10,800 air traffic controllers, well short of its full staffing goal by 3,000, according to the controllers’ union, the NATCA.

“Over the last eight years, we’ve had 146,000 applicants and we’ve hired 7,905 of those,” Chris Wilbanks, vice president of mission support at the FAA who is in charge of controller hiring and training, said in interview in March. “Less than 10% of the people that apply for the job actually make it to the [Oklahoma training] academy and then graduate to go out into the field.”

In the previous fiscal year, the FAA’s goal was to hire 1,800 controllers.

“We’ll lose 35% of those at the academy. We’ll lose another 20% once they get in the field, on the job training. So we don’t net 1,800 controllers,” Wilbanks said.

The grueling job requires air traffic controllers to retire at age 56, and applicants to the academy can be no older than 30. Many are forced to work six-day workweeks because of the shortages.

Duffy has recently moved to increase financial incentives, like higher pay for air traffic controllers. Starting pay is around $45,000, the union’s Daniels said, though the median pay for a U.S. air traffic controller is $144,580 a year, according to the U.S. Labor Department.