Newark Airport Is Experiencing Major Flight Delays. What’s Causing Them?

Flying inside or outside Newark Libery International Airport has brought a lot of misery in the last week, with cancellations, delays that extend well, they fit well to five hours and flight deviations that have varied to travelers away from their destination.

Passengers report on social networks that have lost flights and spent hours trapped in the asphalt aboard the planes. Some are still struggling to make new travel arrangements.

The interruptions, which extended until Friday with delays in an average of approximately two hours, have stood out in the continuous problems of air traffic control personnel. The problems led United Airlines, Newark’s largest carrier, to cut almost three boxes of trip travel by day in the hub from this weekend, the executive director of the airline, Scott Kirby, announced on Friday.

This is what anyone who goes to Newark airport needs to know.

Air traffic control personnel are limiting capacity

Last summer, the air space management that surrounds Newark changed New York to Philadelphia. This movement, which involved relocating at least one air traffic controlle boxes, was intended to relieve delays in air traffic.

The Federal Aviation Administration has attributed this week’s flight interruptions in Newark to personnel failures and problems of not specified personnel at the Philadelphia Air Traffic Control Center in terms of the construction of one of Newark’s tracks.

These ongoing personnel problems are “effectively limiting the capacity of the Newark airport,” said Aidan O’Donnell, general manager of New Jersey airports in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The other large airports in New York City, Kennedy and Laguardia, are managed by the New York Control Center.

One of Newark’s tracks is closed

One of the three airport tracks closed on April 15 for rehabilitation and resurfacing, with string plans in mid -June.

This is a “very routine construction project,” said Mr. O’Donnell, and the airport had been prepared extensively by bar steps, such as programming Ferwer flights.

He thought that the airport has two open cloths, FAA has underutilized one of them during closing, said O’Donnell. “When we only have an available track, we are landing simultaneously on the same track, which is the least efficient way that traffic can be handled inside and out of Newark,” he added.

The airport has more than 1,000 arrivals and exits scheduled every day, most of which are operated by United.

The wave of interruptions that began on Monday has only intensified

The Philadelphia Control Center experienced telecommunications and team problems on Monday, a FAA spokesman said. That led to hundreds of delays and cancellations and three boxes of flight deviations that day, said Mr. O’Donnell. He added that for two hours Monday afternoon, no flight left or landed in Newark.

The interruptions continued during the week as the shortage of air traffic controllers worsened in Philadelphia. Scott Kirby, executive director of United Airlines, told customers that more than 20 percent of Newark’s responsible air traffic drivers “came out of work” this week.

Mr. Kirby added that the shortage of personnel at the Philadelphia Control Center has been a problem for years.

A spokesman for the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers declined to comment.

Problems can persist for a week or months.

The next few weeks could be challenging, said Mr. O’Donnell.

Delays in the massive flight and cancellations may take days to resolve, since airlines browse passengers, crews and return airplanes. Both United and Jetblue Airways have issued flight exemptions that allow travelers to reserve without incurring additional rates.

United will cut 35 of an average or 328 round trip flights per day from its Newark schedule from this weekend. The airport, one of the seven centers of the airline, is a key entrance door to fly to Europe, India and the Middle East.

Without enough controllers, “Newark airport cannot handle the amount of airplanes that are scheduled to operate there in the coming weeks and months,” Kirby said, adding that the reduction of flight was a parallent measure “since there is no way to solve the problems of structural FAA personnel in the short term.”

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