The troubles at Newark Liberty International Airport are not going away and won’t for some time. Is the airport safe (yes), is it cutting flights (yes), will those flights be back anytime soon (to be determined).
Here’s a look at the latest news in a Q&A format based on information from various sources.
Q: Is it safe to fly out of Newark Liberty?
A: The simple answer is yes. When it is not, the airport will use a ground stop, as it did Sunday for approximately 45 minutes when radar communication was interrupted.
The bigger answer is this: You’d be hard-pressed to find another industry that is as concerned about safety as the airline industry. It’s one area where airlines collaborate on best practices — and continuous improvement.
In fact, the airport and airlines have numerous redundancies in place to account for any issue.
Q: If that’s the case, why was there a need for a ground stop?
A: Equipment fails from time to time — that’s why there are so many contingency processes and procedures in place. The ground stop was as a recognition of a failure. (Editor’s note: Not much of answer but all we could get)
Q: Who is making the call on safety?
A: In addition to the airport and the air traffic controllers, it’s the pilots themselves – they have the final say when it comes to providing a safe travel experience. If they felt it wasn’t safe, they wouldn’t be taking off.
Q: Last question on the radar outage. It’s now happened three times in the past two weeks. Is that unusual?
A: They are called ‘blips’ in the industry and certainly happen more often than people realize. That’s not to say this is common — but suffice it to say that it happens enough that there are processes (redundancies) in place to handle them.
Q: One of the calls on safety has been to reduce the number of flights? United announced last week that it was voluntarily halting approximately three dozen routes. The FAA is expected to add to the list later this week. Will that help?
A: Certainly, Newark is capacity constrained at the moment. There has been ongoing construction at the airfield. In addition, there are staffing shortages and equipment shortcomings. Newark Liberty has spent the past 18 months working with the Port Authority and the FAA and local facilities and the FAA at the larger headquarters area to ensure that it is flying the appropriate number of airplanes into the airport. Recent events showed that number needs to go down.
Q: Why is that?
A: Newark has had a number of staffing triggers, where volume is reduced because there aren’t enough controllers to work every scope. So, if staffing is healthy, you can manage more traffic. If technology is healthy, you can manage more traffic.
Q: Staff and technology upgrades won’t happen anytime soon. Is it fair to say the reduced number of flights could be the norm for some time?
A: It’s too early to speculate as to what will be added or taken away. Let’s wait and see what happens this week.
