Being an air traffic controller is such a mentally demanding job that it has a mandatory retirement age of 56. Now, imagine being the only person who shows up for work. One air traffic controller managed all the flights at Newark-Liberty International Airport for three hours on Monday night. The New York City-area airport’s recent technological outages have delayed or canceled hundreds of flights. The debacle also provoked a fifth of the airport’s controllers to take 45-day trauma leave.
An anonymous air traffic controller told the New York Post that Newark was on the verge of a “zero ATC event,” a doomsday scenario where no one was in the tower at one of the country’s busiest international airports. They told the newspaper, “One of the controllers is canceling his day off and coming into work. But that’s not going to safely cover the entire system.” The lone controller, assisted by a trainee, worked from 6:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. within a system intended to function with 15 employees. While Newark was already operating at reduced capacity with one of its runways closed until June, it’s incredibly risky to have a single qualified controller managing airliners in and out of an airport.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blames everyone but himself and his superiors
The Federal Aviation Administration disagreed with the whistleblowing controller’s assessment of what happened on Monday. The agency stated that it had three fully trained and certified air traffic controllers. The FAA was also eager to point out that air traffic was at a relatively manageable level for the meager staff. Newark-Liberty saw roughly 20 arrivals and 20 departures per hour. While the crisis was handled without incident, this can’t continue forever.
Air traffic control staff at Newark-Liberty have dealt with multiple outages where they’ve lost radio communications with aircraft and their screens from the 1980s have gone black for 90-second intervals. The FAA is working quickly to update the facility’s systems and replace the fried copper wiring believed to be the cause of the outages. However, the initial fixes won’t be online until the end of the month.
The Trump administration seems more concerned about ensuring it isn’t blamed for the problems with air traffic control. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy deflected all responsibility during a press conference on Monday, the same day as the alleged single controller shift. He said, “I think it is clear that the blame belongs with the last administration. Joe Biden did nothing to fix the system they knew was broke.” Sean, people are dead! There were mass firings at the FAA in the days leading to the fatal mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport. Even if Biden did nothing to fix the system, Trump made the issues even worse.