Travel woes persisted Monday at New Jersey's beleaguered Newark Liberty International Airport with a ground delay in effect.
The Federal Aviation Administration said departures from Newark would be delayed an average of 19 minutes through 9 p.m. ET due to “FAA staffing issues.”
There were 186 delays at the airport and more than 84 cancellations as of 3 p.m. ET, according to FlightAware data. Passengers are encouraged to contact their airlines for flight status information.
Newark has been at the center of a spate of issues in recent weeks, including radar outages on Friday and Sunday, leading to dozens of cancellations and delays.
Foot traffic and lines were shorter Monday, with fewer people in waiting areas than over the weekend.
George Carrow was on his way to Las Vegas on Monday and said his flight was delayed by about 10 minutes.
"I’ve seen the news around the air traffic control shortage," Carrow said. He felt "a bit nervous about potential delays and further things happening," after hearing about the technical problems and staffing delays but has his "fingers crossed things don’t get more delayed."
Sal Bagdan flew into Newark on Monday morning from Florida and was waiting for his girlfriend’s flight to land.
"I was a little concerned going out due to hearing the news about all the delays and the flight problems here," Bagdan said. "I do have anxiety about that kind of stuff."
He had flown to Miami for his girlfriend’s graduation Thursday. On that trip, he was delayed for two hours flying out of Newark to Miami.
"I got there fine, and then I was pretty concerned on the way back because they said it was more of a problem coming in than going out," he said.
The issues over the weekend at Newark were traced to the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) network out of Philadelphia that guides flights in and out of Newark airspace.
In the Friday outage, radar screens serving Newark went black shortly before 4 a.m. for about 90 seconds on a limited number of sectors, the FAA said.
And on Sunday, Newark said it issued a ground stop “due to FAA equipment outages” that lasted about 45 minutes. The FAA said there was a telecommunications issue at Philadelphia TRACON Area C, and the facilities backup system worked as it was intended, but the FAA slowed traffic to make sure it remained stable.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on "Meet The Press" on Sunday he was concerned about the events at Newark and cast blame on telecommunications issues and glitches in software.
He said that the system for monitoring airspace and flights is outdated but that the airport will be “up and running in short order.”
But the transportation secretary assured the public it's safe to fly in and out of Newark.
In the interim, Duffy said Newark will experience “reduced capacity” in the coming weeks, and he’ll convene a meeting of all the airlines that serve Newark about that reduction Wednesday.
At a news conference Monday afternoon, Duffy said he’s requesting an Inspector General investigation into the previous administration regarding aviation troubles that have come up in recent months.
The secretary also said the FAA has assembled a team of experts to “fully fast-track the fixes that we’ve identified need to be done.”
He noted the FAA has replaced copper lines with fiber lines at Newark, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport in recent weeks, but said testing will take one to two weeks before those lines are live.
He said the administration has been in contact with Verizon and L3 Harris, a government contractor, to understand “why the telecom issues persist and how we can expedite those fixes.”
He said the goal is to add three new telecommunications between New York and Philadelphia to provide more high-speed reliability and redundancy “as soon as possible.” He said the FAA has also deployed a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia TRACON “that will provide redundancy during the switch to a more reliable fiber optic network.”
However, he warned that even with these new lines, air traffic control towers, TRACONs and aviation centers use outdated systems “that looks like it’s off the Apollo 13 set.”
“Today we have high-speed fiber, but when it comes into the TRACONs, we do slow it down so it can be used by the old equipment,” Duffy explained. “Our hope is to have high-speed fiber connections and then new technology in these towers, in TRACONs and centers, so we can maximize the use of American airspace.”
Duffy had opened his remarks by pointing blame to the Biden administration for missteps within the aviation industry and infrastructure.
Anne Butterer, who was at Newark traveling to Stockholm for vacation on Monday, told NBC News: “The blame game isn’t helping anyone. I just feel like everything is about politics these days, and they just need to put that aside and fix the problem.”
She said has faith in Newark workers and the Philadelphia TRACON.
“I haven’t been that concerned with the safety aspect. Just because I know there are safety measures in place, and they’re very strict safety measures and that everyone involved, the pilots, the air traffic controllers, all of the employees working for the airline want to make sure that all of their passengers and staff get to their destinations safely,” she said.
