Title: What's Going On At Newark Airport?

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we turn to the turbulence at Newark Airport, causing frustration for travelers and workers alike. It's not just about the delays and canceled flights. Last week, the air traffic system connecting controllers and pilots shut down for an undisclosed period of time. Somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds, it seems, air traffic controllers lost the ability to locate planes on radar or communicate with pilots in the Newark airspace. How scary is that? Take a listen to a fraught exchange between an air traffic controller and a pilot of a small plane during that outage.

Air Traffic Controller: No, you do not have a Bravo clearance. We lost our radar, and it's not working correctly. Radar service terminates. Squawk VFR greens change approved. If you want a Bravo clearance, you can just call the towers when you get closer.

Pilot: Okay, I'll wait for that frequency from you, okay?

Air Traffic Controller: Okay. No, just Squawk VFR. Look up the tower frequencies. We don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are.

Brian Lehrer: "We don't have a radar, so we don't know where you are." Yikes. Not the conversation you want the folks responsible for keeping you safe in the air to be having, right? The stress of that incident resulted, among other things, in five air traffic controllers going on trauma leave for 45 days. As a result, Newark has seen those major delays creating a boiling pot of frustrated passengers and staff inside the airport's walls.

Joining me now to take us behind the scenes of the chaos at Newark Airport is Pete Muntean. He's a CNN correspondent covering aviation and transportation for the network. He's also a pilot and flight instructor himself, so he's bringing that perspective to his reporting on this incident as well. Pete, thank you so much for giving us some time today. Welcome to WNYC.

Pete Muntean: Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: We heard that scary exchange between the air traffic controller and a pilot looking to approach Newark during the outage last week. Can you take us further into that incident and tell our listeners in a little more detail what was going on?

Pete Muntean: We're getting the best picture yet now, having last night, I just talked to a controller who was in that facility at the time of the systems meltdown, where they lost not only radar, so they can't see where the planes are, but they also lost radio, meaning that they cannot communicate with planes via voice, so operating blind and deaf there in the Newark Approach Control Facility, which is actually in Philadelphia.

This controller described it to me as the worst possible thing that could happen to a controller. The most dangerous situation is the direct quote. He says that they were without those systems for about 90 seconds, which in the busiest airspace in the country is an eternity, and he says that controllers have been sort of pounding their fists on the podium, saying this was a problem already and was going to continue to be a problem, and they had this connectivity issue from the old facility.

This facility moved last July from Long Island to Philadelphia. The connectivity there has been kind of spotty, essentially running the new facility off of the old facility off of copper wiring, and he told me it's kind of a single point of failure, doesn't really have redundancy, and that he was under the impression that it was just a single stream of data that comes into their new facility that carries both radio and radar, and now we're uncovering that this has happened before.

Back on November 6th, there was a FedEx flight that controllers were talking to, being turned on to the final approach there at Newark, and they lost the ability to communicate with that plane. The plane continued, instead of taking a critical turn, continued to the east into the airspace over LaGuardia, and this controller told me we all expected what happened in DC, the fatal midair collision over the Potomac, to happen there in Newark, so really chilling stuff.

Brian Lehrer: Can you decode some of the terms that we heard in the clip? What is being communicated when the air traffic controller denies Bravo clearance and tells the pilot to Squawk VFR that?

Pete Muntean: That is essentially code for "Go away, I can't handle you right now." Controllers in New York sort of have a bit of a tradition of being no BS, and they will tell you when they can't handle you, but this was something that was essentially brought on by the system's meltdown. Squawk VFR is saying, "You're on your own. See and avoid other airplanes. I can't pick you up on radar right now. Stay out of the Class B."

That's the upside-down wedding cake shape of airspace there in the New York area, saying, "Don't come into my airspace. Stay below it or outside of it." Essentially, he's saying, "Got to go find someplace else because I can't handle you, and frankly, I can't see you." Controllers, just to sort of put this into context, this is not an air traffic control tower; this is a radar facility.

They can't see airplanes unless they see them on radar and can talk to them via voice. There's no way to communicate otherwise. There are a few backups in a tower. You could see things with your eyeball. They can send light gun signals. You can't do that here. The controllers, essentially, had none of the tools in their toolkit to do the job.

Brian Lehrer: Well, how many planes would there have been in Newark's airspace during the outage?

Pete Muntean: This, we think, at least according to the analysis from FlightAware and Flightradar24, there were 15 to 20 planes in the airspace at that one given time.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Pete Muntean: We're talking millions of cubic feet of airspace, so this wasn't an immediate danger. Thank goodness that this happened in daylight. There was no mitigating weather conditions. The planes could essentially see and avoid each other if it came to it, but this is something that can change really quickly on a dime when airplanes on approach are going about 150 or 200 miles an hour, and they're close to one another.

We know very quickly, at least from the DCA mid-air collision, that these can turn into a disaster very, very fast. Everyone's on a heightened state of alert right now. There's a lot of vigilance in the aviation system, and by the way, this is symptomatic of something that has been going on in aviation for a long time. There's been an incredible shortage of air traffic controllers. There's been aging and crumbling infrastructure in the FAA system.

Some of these towers and facilities that controllers work in are 50, 60, 70 years old. Sometimes they don't have air conditioning. Sometimes they just really lack the basics. This has been a huge problem dating back decades, and the alarm bells have been sounded over and over again from on high in Congress, at the administrative level, the executive branch, and also down to these controllers, who are saying they need help.

Brian Lehrer: Pete Muntean with us, CNN aviation correspondent, who's also a pilot and flight instructor himself, on the chaos at Newark and the structural problems, as he was just describing. Listeners, I wonder if anybody else is out there who has any connection to this system. Any air traffic controllers listening right now, or former air traffic controllers, or other people with professional experience that might give you an opinion or some insight on how to fix the problem?

I think Peter's doing a great job describing what the problem is. We're going to get into potential fixes, and maybe any of you have anything on that? 212-433-WNYC, help us report this story or call with a question. 212-433-9692, call or text. Pete, as we said in the intro, as people have been hearing, 5 air traffic controllers are now on leave for 45 days after this outage, saying, because of the trauma.

I can hear critics of the controllers seeing such an extended leave as maybe selfish, given the broader meltdown of the system that it's triggered because there's a shortage of traffic controllers now, and I could see others thinking, "Well, maybe this is a work action, a work slowdown that the union might even be behind to really draw attention to this and make sure it gets the attention of the federal government in a way that they really will do something." Which of all of the above do you think it is?

Pete Muntean: No doubt, the Trump administration is paying attention to this right now. More on that later, but this was not a walkout. On Friday, the CEO of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, sent out a memo to passengers and also internally in the airline, saying this was a walkout. These controllers are legally entitled to this trauma leave, 45 days of leave after something bad happens, and controllers take it after an incident or an accident.

Controllers took it in the case of the midair collision here at Reagan National Airport, but this is not a union-pushed thing; this is something that they do when they are essentially stressed out. It's already a stressful job. These controllers are working mandatory 6-day weeks of 10-hour shifts. They're working 60 hours a week because of the shortage of 3,000 air traffic controllers nationwide. This is not an easy fix.

They don't take it lightly when they take this trauma leave. I asked my anonymous controller last night, does he fault controllers for taking trauma leave? He says no. He says, "They have to do this. You have to understand that we have been saying over and over again that this would happen." Sure, there's an element, he sort of says, I'm paraphrasing now, of them being fed up, but also, they're up against a wall, and now they need to take this leave.

I'm told that they are mandated to essentially meet with a psychiatrist, get them some help to bring them back on the job. Just a reminder, 90 seconds where you cannot see or communicate with planes is an eternity when it comes to an air traffic controller's life, and the uncertainty when that system comes back online, they don't know whether or not it's stable. They don't know if it's going to stay online, and they can actually really rely on the systems that they need to do their job. I would say, yes, it's traumatic, and yes, it's their right to do it.

Brian Lehrer: We want our air traffic controllers emotionally sound, right? And not hair-trigger in any sense. I want to play a clip of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. He held a news conference yesterday discussing the issues at Newark. Here he is identifying what he sees as the core issues creating the problem.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: What are some of the problems? First, there's an unresolved and nationwide air traffic controller shortage. Second, DOGE hacked a chainsaw and fired many people at the FAA, who have not been replaced. Three, the technology is old and must be updated. It was one of the things that happened at Newark is a copper wire burnt. Why are we using copper wire in 2025? Have they heard of fiber? Four, depleting federal funds that the administration cannot ignore in the upcoming budget. They've got to invest more in the air traffic control system.

Brian Lehrer: Pete, Schumer is trying to put it on the Trump administration. The Trump administration is trying to put it on the Biden administration. We have a couple of texts like that. One says, "What did Pete Buttigieg do for the FAA while he was Transportation Secretary?" Another says, and now this one has left my screen, but it was basically-- Oh, here, "Were any improvements made during the Biden administration?" From two different phone numbers. Talk about the politics of this.

Pete Muntean: There's a lot of politics here. Really, this goes back not to just the Biden administration, not to just the first Trump administration, not to just the Obama administration; the problems with air traffic controller hiring date back to the Reagan administration, when Reagan fired all the controllers during the PATCO Strike in the early '80s, so this is on the backs of a lot of different politics here.

The finger-pointing has to really start with "Why have we not properly funded the FAA?" Now it's on a five-year sort of patchwork system where there's a reauthorization bill that just passed last year to fund the FAA. We'll see now it's the Trump administration's problem now. In some ways, blaming previous administrations is not super productive. It's on the Trump administration to now fix this. The Biden administration did get some more controllers in the pipeline.

They hired about 1,200 controllers, depending on how you count. The problem is now with attrition and mandatory 56 retirement age, essentially, the FAA nets very few controllers every year. They may hire a few hundred controllers every year, but they might only net something in the double digits, and sometimes we've seen they net maybe 20 or 30 controllers in one year, even though they've hired a few hundred.

There's also another problem, which is the FAA Air Traffic Control Academy in Oklahoma City is incredibly backlogged since the pandemic, and a lot of people don't want to move to Oak City because of where it is, so now there's talk about opening up another FAA training academy and trying to increase the pipeline from colleges where students major in this, and trying to get them straight to facilities at bypassing the FAA academy and getting them to work a little bit quicker.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has thrown in financial incentives to make it so new hires stay on and don't leave, they get rewarded when they reach certain benchmarks, and then also getting controllers who are eligible for retirement early to stay on to the 56 mandatory retirement age, so there's a lot of work being done right now. It's a little unfair, I think, to blame previous administrations because it's easy to do that.

It's been a long time coming, and it's the problem of now, and passengers are going to feel it more and more. Newark is just a microcosm of the problems that are happening in the air traffic control system nationwide, and this has been teed up for decades.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, some texts coming in. One listener says, "What's going to be done about this? Antiquated equipment has nothing to do with Reagan." Another one writes, "How much do air traffic controllers get paid?" Another one asked, "Why is there a shortage of 3,000 air traffic controllers? That seems a long time of not filling positions." Let's take those last two. How much do air traffic controllers get paid?

Pete Muntean: They make a pretty good wage. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is calling for them to essentially get more money. It's a relatively good job. The problem is, it requires a lot of moving around. Usually, you start at a smaller tower and a smaller town. You get bumped up to a bigger tower and a larger town. You may end up in a slightly cushier job and a center or one of these TRACONs when you become more senior.

Controllers, also, are incredibly service-oriented people. It's a thing that really matters a lot to millennials and Gen Z. They're the unsung heroes of aviation. Small heroic acts every day, and these are people that you don't see ever, really. You may know an air traffic controller from a cocktail party or something like that, but you're not going to see them. You don't have access to a tower or a TRACON, or a center facility.

This is something that is going to be incumbent on the current administration to really turn around. I want to also talk about the infrastructure, too, because Senator Schumer really threw that heater of a soundbite straight over a home plate when he talked about copper wire. "Have they heard of fiber?" The FAA just said today that they are going to install fiber optic cable to that new facility in Philadelphia that's responsible for Newark flights.

They're also going to install a backup. This is something that is really, really key for the FAA to do, and it seems to be the blueprint of a revamp of the air traffic control system, the back-end infrastructure and technology that's going to be rolled out by Duffy tomorrow, so we'll hear a bit more here. Is this a huge priority for the Trump administration? Essentially, President Trump has said, "We want a new, big, and beautiful air traffic control system."

Brian Lehrer: How long will that take?

Pete Muntean: Well, I've pushed the administration on this a little bit. They say three to four years. I'm a little less optimistic, and I think three to four years, you'll be lucky to get contracts awarded to build new facilities and lay new wiring, but we'll see. This administration is focused on fast and yesterday, so it could be quicker, but I think the goal of having this all done by the end of one administration is a pretty aggressive one.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe Tom in Holmdel, New Jersey, will have something to say about that. It looks like he used to work on upgrading the air traffic control system. Tom, thanks for calling in. You're on WNYC.

Tom: Yes, hi. Yes, I'm an engineer. I worked for, let me say, Bell Laboratories a long time ago. We were working on a program with the FAA down in Atlantic City on upgrading the entire air traffic control system, and this included adding another feature, which would minimize the need for controllers, called free flight, and the idea there was using Mode 6 and a couple of other procedures to get information right to the cockpit so the pilot could see all the flights around them and make a decision and not have to talk to air traffic controllers.

The other thing I want to mention is this. My understanding is that a lot of the equipment, forgetting about the copper wire business, a lot of the equipment is still vacuum tubes, okay? They have not upgraded that because of the course. This was back in-- Oh, when I was working on this, a long time ago, before Bell Labs went away, but my understanding is still is, and of course, the tubes are not made in the US anymore; they're made over in Eastern Europe someplace. Basically, that's my comment.

Brian Lehrer: Tom, thank you very much for that context. He almost suggests there, Pete, that AI or something, he didn't say AI, but AI or something, could replace the human air traffic controllers. Do you think that might be the case?

Pete Muntean: I think replacing a human, which can make a thousand calculations every second when it comes to this job, and it's very hard. I've tried the simulators not only in the tower, but also in the radar facility at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. I've been around aviation my entire life. I've been flying since I was a teen. I was not very good at it, so I think replacing a human will be really difficult.

I think augmenting their job with AI or supplementing their job with AI is maybe going to be part of the conversation here, and how do we make it so they are essentially supported by better computer systems, and making it so that things are brought into the 21st century, and that these systems have the ability to sort of endure as technological advance comes in? Because some of the problem here, and this is how a top member of the House described it to me on the committee that oversees the FAA, revamping the FAA and the air traff system, which, by the way, is a 24-hour system, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it's running, it's humming.

You just don't see it. It's in the background. It's a bit like changing the spark plugs in your car while you're driving it. This is going to be a Herculean effort to try and do that. This is not a flip of a switch, and pulling out systems while controllers still need to do their job is going to be quite tricky.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for laying out what the technological requirements are, the engineering requirements for upgrading the system. Just one last question on the controllers themselves, and then they're out of time. I asked before about the pay that they get. I see that the median annual wage for air traffic control specialists is about $127,000, and the salaries for entry-level air traffic control specialists increase as they complete each new training phase.

It also depends where they're stationed. We just did a whole series on this show on making a good living without a college degree. I don't think you need a college degree to be an air traffic controller, but considering how many people there are without college degrees who are looking for ways to make a good living, are they not filling these ATC positions because they're just so stressful and people don't want them?

Pete Muntean: I think the FAA needs to hunt for ducks where there are ducks, and this is something that they've tried to start doing. They're looking for gamers because there's a lot of crossover in the skill set. The hand-eye coordination and keeping track of things on a map. That can be something really to the advantage of the FAA. There were a lot of barriers to entry for hiring for a long time, where students would go to colleges that specialize in ATC, then go to the FAA, and then wash out, which sort of says and talking to controllers and I talk with them all the time, the bar was a little high or maybe at least in the wrong spot.

Now it's sort of on the FAA to turn this around. The problem is, the system is so large, and it's a huge bureaucracy. Something the Trump administration has been really targeting is breaking down these bureaucratic barriers. In some ways, making big changes at the FAA is like turning an aircraft carrier with a single boat oar, and the other issue here is safety. Doing things quickly in aviation can be kind of dangerous. The rules in aviation are written in blood. To have to do some sort of revamp very fast could also introduce new risks into the system, and aviation, generally, the top priority is safety. You always want to do things slow.

Brian Lehrer: Pete Muntean covers aviation for CNN. He's also a pilot and flight instructor himself. Thank you for all your insight, and we really appreciate you coming on some other broadcast outlet and giving us so much time.

Pete Muntean: Happy to be here.

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