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United States Transportation

The Newark Airport Crisis is About To Become Everyone's Problem (theverge.com) 147

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Newark Liberty International Airport has suffered six radar and radio outages in nine months, with the most recent occurring May 9th when controllers told pilots "our scopes just went black again" before handing off flights to other facilities. The outages have forced flight cancellations, diversions, and delays lasting over a week as airlines repositioned aircraft and crews.

The Federal Aviation Administration created the problem by relocating Newark's air traffic control operations from the understaffed N90 facility on Long Island to Philadelphia in 2024. Only 17 of 33 controllers accepted the move despite $100,000 relocation bonuses, leaving operations short-staffed. Rather than build new STARS servers in Philadelphia, the FAA opted to send radar data over 130 miles of commercial copper telephone lines.

The remote feeds have experienced approximately 10 minutes of downtime over 10 months -- exceeding the agency's reliability standards and occurring 200 times more frequently than the FAA's internal analysis predicted. The agency simultaneously laid off over 100 maintenance technicians and telecommunications specialists in February, further straining an air traffic control system that suffers around 700 outages weekly nationwide while managing 16.8 million annual flights with 1990s-era technology.

The Newark Airport Crisis is About To Become Everyone's Problem More | Reply

The Newark Airport Crisis is About To Become Everyone's Problem

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  • Trump crashes the economy and planes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ihavesaxwithcollies ( 10441708 ) on Monday May 26, 2025 @03:55PM (#65405411)
    What a stable genius!

    • He took over the role of screen legend Lloyd picked-the-wrong-day-to-quit-smoking-crack Bridges

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Mod parent funny, but so many stories with unfulfilled potential for funny these days...

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by hambone142 ( 2551854 )

      ATC was screwed up decades before Trump. It's running on antiquated equipment.

      • Re:Trump crashes the economy and planes (Score:5, Insightful)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Monday May 26, 2025 @04:29PM (#65405487) Homepage

        ATC was screwed up decades before Trump. It's running on antiquated equipment.

        So laying off 100 of the maintenance technicians and telecommunications specialists that kept it running was a genius idea, you say?

        • The Federal Aviation Administration created the problem by relocating Newark's air traffic control operations from the understaffed N90 facility on Long Island to Philadelphia in 2024. Only 17 of 33 controllers accepted the move despite $100,000 relocation bonuses, leaving operations short-staffed.

          If you're upset about having fewer Air Traffic Controllers, perhaps direct your ire towards the administration that chose to relocate the facility and in the process list half the Air Traffic Controllers?

          Rather than build new STARS servers in Philadelphia, the FAA opted to send radar data over 130 miles of commercial copper telephone lines.

          Sounds like the reliability issue was baked into the move under the previous administration - "opted to send radar data over 130 of commercial copper telephone lines."

          The remote feeds have experienced approximately 10 minutes of downtime over 10 months -- exceeding the agency's reliability standards and occurring 200 times more frequently than the FAA's internal analysis predicted.

          Apparently the decision to use commercial copper telephone lines" by the previous administration was a bad decision...

          The agency simultaneously laid off over 100 maintenance technicians and telecommunications specialists in February, further straining an air traffic control system that suffers around 700 outages weekly nationwide while managing 16.8 million annual flights with 1990s-era technology.

          The main problem in New

      • Weird coincidence (Score:5, Informative)

        by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Monday May 26, 2025 @04:34PM (#65405513)
        ...And Biden tried to fix it, and Republicans didn't let him.

        But anyway, to your point, for some mysterious reason the antiquated system kept limping along until Stumpy and his Doge saboteurs took over.

        Must be pure bad luck that massively fucking around with the agency happened at the same time, right?

        Everything Trump touches turns to shit.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          It's more nuanced than that. Funding was packaged together with other stuff in multiple proposed bills, so it's hard to pin blame on any one party. But it's fair to say Congress failed to do their job in general.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

            It still confuses me that the US populace takes this tactic of tacking everything onto one bill that is completely unrelated lying down.

            That kind of open corruption is the biggest middle finger US politicians could give the people. They're actively ridiculing the voters and the voters just look elsewhere and get annoyed and comparatively minor issues.

            Boggles the mind.

      • ATC was screwed up decades before Trump. It's running on antiquated equipment.

        Worse, the Philly control centre is connected to Newark via antiquated copper comm lines instead of fibre. Hell of a way to run a major hub...

      • Exactly. I will blame Trump for a lot of things going to shits, but the American aviation infrastructure has been notoriously under funded for a while and has lacked the steps to modernise that we have seen elsewhere. The fault is likely on congress and those managing the infrastructure. Between the 737 Max and this, the FAA is probably going to improve how it does things, but here we can blame Trump for staffing that will lead to future issues.

        What I am curious now is how they will address all of this goin

    • The decision to move control to from Long Island to Philly and to NOT upgrade the facilities or compensate for the many controllers who balked at relocation was made during Mr. Autopen's watch in 2024 and had zero to do with Trump.

      Just sayin.

    • You might want to at least read the article first, maybe then you'd realize the problem was caused way before Trump - heck, even the summary talks about 10 month span, while trump has not been in power even half of that period. But I get it, if you're going to try for popularity, why not post an unsubstantiated bumper sticker slogan. Hmm... that sounds just like what Trump does.

    • What a stable genius!

      We can blame Trump for a lot of things, but not this particular instance. This would have happened before Trump and I doubt Biden had any say in this either. This was either something coming from the FAA or congress (I haven’t read into the history of the move).

      One thing I do question is given that some operators didn’t not want to move, that they didn’t opt for a hybrid solution, with some operators in the local location and some in the remote location. At the very least it would have pro

  • STARS servers? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Monday May 26, 2025 @03:57PM (#65405419)

    Sorry, I've only been a pilot for almost 20 years and I've never heard of "STARS servers".
    N90 is an ARTCC and relocating that is something that has been done before, just not this incompetently. And no, it has nothing to do with copper, fiber, Elon interjecting his oversubscribed satelitte network, etc. It's poor design, lack of redundancy, and no testing.

    It only matters that "so many people left" because Trump/DOGGIE let all the good ones (who could easily get other jobs) go.

    The ARTCC network wasn't designed to have these kind of tsunamis. They handle gentle waves.

    Please Congress, offer Trump and his cronies $100K to retire early. He can keep his massive grift (two cryptocoins, private use of the presidential seal and white house, and never-will-happen Qatari Air Force One.) Those guys have damage our infrastructure and EWR is just one example.

    • Re:STARS servers? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Monday May 26, 2025 @04:14PM (#65405457)

      Sorry, I've only been a pilot for almost 20 years and I've never heard of "STARS servers".

      https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/... [dot.gov]
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Who let the air traffic controllers go? TFS links to https://www.natca.org/2024/07/... [natca.org], which says:

      The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) is dismayed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has determined that effective July 28, 2024, it is requiring the relocation of 12 air traffic controllers [...].

      I'm pretty sure that wasn't a Trump or DOGE decision, unless people were hiding who was running the federal government in 2024 much more than has been apparent.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The OP did not specify air-traffic controllers.

        You should read this link from the article:
        https://theaircurrent.com/avia... [theaircurrent.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          From TFS, we are taking about air traffic controllers:

          The Federal Aviation Administration created the problem by relocating Newark's air traffic control operations

          If the OP had some off topic rant, that's not my problem.

    • They need to rebuild with IBM z mainframes, redundant links, and regular testing of high availability including failure injection and ability to do live upgrades. Preferably, using Erlang or ADA. Furthermore, no AGILE BS, waterfall development all the way with formal methods including verification.

    • Please Congress, offer Trump and his cronies $100K to retire early.

      Ummm, you do not realize what happened yet. Trump is King and Congress is irrelevant as is the Supreme Court. Even if the King 'retires', there will be another King installed. Your Constitution, your Rights, are all gone. You just don't realize it yet.

  • Sure glad the Bell System was destroyed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Monday May 26, 2025 @03:59PM (#65405423)

    In the Old Days(tm), say 1990, electric power companies depended on Bell System wires for the most critical protective relaying applications, and the Bell Operating Companies provided nine 9s reliability with latency approaching the speed of light. Television networks likewise: national distribution in as close to atomic time synchronization as was humanly possible.

    Today one is lucky to be able to make a voice call from one medium sized city to another without dropouts, jitter, disconnections, and other digital voice garbage. Latency? Ha ha ha ha. Reliability? Not even funny.

    Progress!

    • OK, but do you really want to go back to paying the current equivalent $10 per minute for the privilege of using a piece of dedicated copper for a cross-country call?

      BTW, "nine 9s" is one just second downtime out of 30 years continuous service. I was there back in the day of analog long distance, and I can assure you that reliability was nowhere near that. For example, if you tried to make a call on Mother's day after dinner, your chances of actually getting through were often less than 50%.

      Getting a "fast

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )

        " I was there back in the day of analog long distance, and I can assure you that reliability was nowhere near that."

        For your home landline?

        Or for the dedicated line you were contracted directly with Bell with to provide point-to-point connectivity for critical communications infrastructure?

        They weren't offering lots of 9's on your consumer land line, but that didn't mean they weren't offering it.

        • point-to-point connectivity

          I don't know why anyone would imply this level of service went away. If you want a direct link of fiber between two locations you can have it, you just have to pay for it. Meanwhile the base level of service has improved exponentially over the decades to where folks don't pay for those connections anymore even when they should.

          Having however many nines you want in reliability is a business choice, not a technology one. In 1990 you just didn't happen to have as many ways to lower your cost's and get away w

      • I can assure you that reliability was nowhere near that. For example, if you tried to make a call on Mother's day after dinner, your chances of actually getting through were often less than 50%.

        Sounds like you're conflating capability and reliability. If you couldn't get through it was probably because the system was saturated with other calls, not because it was down.

      • Ummm maybe that's because you weren't a priority. The 9's were given to the people who didn't need to call their mothers but needed to land a plane. Apparently you needed to prioritize properly and your mother was probably better off without your phone call. Especially if she was on a plane.

    • Back in the 90's Newark-Philly was close enough to the SONET Ring with multipathed fiber. You could get an OC-48 for reasonable money ($1300ish IIRC) with absurd uptime guarantees if the ring ran past your building. Backhoe Bobs couldn't take down your service without a coordinated attack.

      Have we ripped all that out in the past thirty years?

      You'd think ATC would be important enough to pay for reliable service.

    • Long distance calling and video chats work great nearly all over the world (depending on network connection). Now verifying the person you're talking to is actually the person you think you're talking to in the age of photorealistic video/voice filters is a whole different matter.
    • Same goes for (aerial) broadcast TV.

      Used to be that you could watch basic programming, even during severe weather events, in the sticks with just a pair of rabbit ears on top of the TV and a little static popping in and out due to interference. (In fact one of the justifications for such broadcasts was informing the public during such emergencies.) Heck you could even be sitting in a moving car with a portable TV (like my old RCA 16-3050.) and watch TV just fine on long car trips.

      Today one is lucky to b

  • Cause (Score:2)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 )

    The Federal Aviation Administration created the problem by relocating Newark's air traffic control operations from the understaffed N90 facility on Long Island to Philadelphia in 2024.

    That isn't what created the problem. The FAA is moving operations to Philadelphia because they can't get enough staff to work in Newark. Long Island is having the same staffing problems but Dick Durban blocked the FAA from moving those staff to Philadelphia. It's been an issue for decades.

    Source: My cousin flies for United.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      It did create the problem because "the FAA opted to send radar data over 130 miles of commercial copper telephone lines" as part of this move. A) it's not efficient and 2) it's not secure.

      • How is a dedicated line not secure? There is a reason why a fax still exists.

        • Fax has no authentication or encryption. It is subject to MITM and definitely not secure.

          You can, however, use secure protocols such as TLS over dedicated copper lines. Just not fax. But if the copper hasn't been maintained and the connection drops periodically, no amount of protocol security is going to help.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

          There is a reason why a fax still exists.

          Yeah, because retards. Faxes aren't secure. Faxing isn't even a good technology. If your business still relies on fax machines, your business is shit.

          130miles of dedicated copper isn't secure and it's slow in a profession where delays in information is bad. A copper line should be the last resort for something like this. They'd probably get better service by using satellites.

    • If no one will work for the wages you offer, does the problem lie with you or everyone else?

      • I'm sorry to bring this up for a second time today, but the military figured this out ages ago. You build a small housing area near the runway and operate subsidized stores for food and other essentials. This lets you pay lower than market wage but still have employees living in the area. The main thing holding us back is that the we're keeping this capitalist system where the government doesn't tell its employees where to live.

        • You mean a Hooverville? I don't think the modern white collar worker is interested in living in a Hooverville. It's not like they're Okies fleeing the dust bowl.
          The problem is really that they're not paid a fair wage for the area they live in, considering the importance of the labor they provide.
          The other problem is the FAA's inability to get budget for maintenance and upgrades of facilities. TRACON deals with more air traffic than any region should.

  • Sabotage for privatization (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday May 26, 2025 @04:15PM (#65405465)
    That's what this is. It's an old trick of oligarchs and billionaires, it's so old that when it was first invented we had millionaires instead of billionaires (or the upcoming trillionaires which we should have after the big beautiful bill passes).

    What you do is you sabotage the basic functionality of the government and then you get the voters to blame the government for their problems.

    Then you campaign on fixing those problems with less government which means you can take necessary public services that would normally be done by the government because they are necessary public services and you can privatize them skimming off the top of basic functions of human civilization.

    Florida I understand has it real bad right now with a whole shitload of government agencies cut past the bone. It's at the point that basic stuff like inspections and basic functions of the Courts are starting to be impacted.

    It's just one of many tricks used for a tiny population of about 2,000 people to control a population of 350 million and steal their property and money.

    I wish we would spend more time teaching about this crap in schools, hell anytime. But of course if you tried to those 2,000 people in charge would make damn sure you couldn't.

    I mean it's not like the king let you teach people about democracies benefits right?

    • And when they try to privatize not only will everything be worse, but they'll lose their "government bad" excuse. Leaving them with "Biden bad".

    • I wonder when these greedy bastards are going to realize that one of the steadiest trends in industrial civilization is that fewer and fewer individuals can inflict higher and higher casualties, when they choose to go on the warpath. It only takes one little security breakdown to make a yacht or manor house or private airplane vulnerable to some kind of drone with a nasty payload.

      • They have seized control of The reigns of power and with it the militaries of every Nation on the planet.

        They are acutely aware that the military's might turn on them but that just gets us to a junta and a different set of brutal dictators. Like how Russia traded the mob bosses for Vladimir Putin.

        And of course they are aware of the military might turn on them and are working on automated killbots to replace the militaries. They will still have a handful of engineers to keep the killbots working but

    • Do you have any actual evidence that Florida is suffering from a non-functional court system? Sure looks like future budgets will be quite generous for the state court system:

      https://flccoc.org/court-syste... [flccoc.org]

    • Yep. Break it, blame the scapegoats and other team, throw it all out, and rebuild it with Halliburton contracts as slowly as possible.

    • ... teach people about democracies ...

      It's the twenty thousand below the top-tier, that make the difference: They've got the wealth to get an education and see the world, first-hand. When the top-tier abuses them the same as poor people, that's when democracy and law becomes valued.

      Modern talking-points are centered on the top 0.1% of the US wealth. Problem is, the US oligarchy extends down into the top 2%. Meaning, the time, knowledge and money to incite a rebellion, is missing from the USA. Worse, the schoolyard pledge to not fight the

    • Wasn't this a decision by Mr Buttegeig & Mr Biden?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      That's what this is. It's an old trick of oligarchs and billionaires, it's so old that when it was first invented we had millionaires instead of billionaires (or the upcoming trillionaires which we should have after the big beautiful bill passes).

      What you do is you sabotage the basic functionality of the government and then you get the voters to blame the government for their problems.

      Then you campaign on fixing those problems with less government which means you can take necessary public services that would normally be done by the government because they are necessary public services and you can privatize them skimming off the top of basic functions of human civilization.

      Florida I understand has it real bad right now with a whole shitload of government agencies cut past the bone. It's at the point that basic stuff like inspections and basic functions of the Courts are starting to be impacted.

      It's just one of many tricks used for a tiny population of about 2,000 people to control a population of 350 million and steal their property and money.

      I wish we would spend more time teaching about this crap in schools, hell anytime. But of course if you tried to those 2,000 people in charge would make damn sure you couldn't.

      I mean it's not like the king let you teach people about democracies benefits right?

      And the lords and barons behind this still don't get that the end game is when the people throw the ruling class onto the spears of the soldiers.

      I'd rather not let it get so bad the world needs another communist revolution. They never turn out well. They can be avoided if the issues are dealt with in time and the power of the ultra wealthy is checked.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

      Is it better to be brought up on charges before Publix State Courts or Winn Dixie State Courts?

  • it's almost like someone who is responsible for maintaining the system has instead just been robbing it for their own personal gain, like a capitalist dirtbag thief might do, just take take taking, offering nothing at all of value. quite a lot like dog shit might. but no, go ahead, masturbate yourself about how good capitalism is like a typical slashtard. fuckin virgins

  • Why not deploy more servers? I understand the system is understaffed, so ignoring that, is there a reason they can't deploy more servers with failover?

  • managing 16.8 million annual flights with 1990s-era technology.

    That is the time when Elon Musk steps in to sell us some stuff to fix the problem.

  • You mean "everyone in one particular country", surely?

  • The airlines spent their political capitol fighting regulation and creating legal quagmires for competition such as Southwest Airlines. We all know Congress does what industry asks ... so clearly the airlines have not been prioritizing ATC improvements.

  • About To Become Everyone's Problem

    Nicht mein Bier.

  • Don't obfuscate who is calling the shots.

    Also, the idea that government can be run like a business is ridiculous because:

    1) government can't run a profit so there is missing the fundamental goal of a business enterprise; and
    2) government can't run "cheap" because not only because its services have huge impact on the population, but mostly because everyone selling to government inflates their prices.

    Want good quality ATC? Accept to government paying fair prices and wages, and start penalizing the profiteers

  • if they laid off more, they could then blame Obama?

  • Move the control center miles and miles away, what could go wrong?

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