AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Federal regulators are limiting the number of flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport. The move comes after a harrowing month for travelers at one of the country's busiest airports and also for the air traffic controllers who work the airspace around it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We lost our radar, and it's not working correctly. Radar service remains...
CHANG: Communications and radar systems went dark several times at the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia, where controllers manage the airspace around Newark, as you can hear in these archived audio recordings from the website liveatc.net.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: FedEx 1989, I'm going to hand you off here. Our scopes just went black again.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Three of our radar screens went black, and there's no frequencies.
CHANG: Hundreds of flights in and out of Newark have been canceled or delayed, and now the Federal Aviation Administration is slowing the pace of arrivals and departures. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy insists that that will help.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SEAN DUFFY: I believe the system is safe. There are multiple redundancies throughout the system that keep people safe. The key is not efficiency. The key is safety.
CHANG: Still, these incidents have raised huge questions about how the mess in Newark got as bad as it did and what it will take to fix an aging air traffic control system. Today, we're going to hear a perspective from inside that system from an air traffic controller who was working the airspace around Newark during one of those outages. NPR's Joel Rose covers transportation and joins us now. So, Joel, who was this air traffic controller that you spoke with, and what can you tell us about them?
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: What I can say, first of all, is that they work in the Philadelphia TRACON - that's short for the Terminal Radar Approach Control. These are facilities that handle traffic in highly congested airspace, in this case, around Newark. This controller asked us not to use their name because they are not authorized to speak publicly by their bosses at the FAA, and they're afraid of retaliation for speaking out. They also asked us not to use their voice for the same reason. So what you're going to hear in this story are their words, but they will be read by one of our producers.
CHANG: Got it. OK. And as we just said, this person was on duty during one of these outages. What was that like?
ROSE: They said it was incredibly frustrating to have the tools that they rely on to do the job simply fail, losing contact with fully loaded jets traveling hundreds of miles an hour in some of the nation's busiest airspace. Again, this is the voice of an NPR producer reading the words of the air traffic controller.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Reading) It was, like, disbelief. And then it was just, like, fury, honestly. Like, how could they have us working this, you know? Frustration, anger, like just being furious at the FAA because we had other outages prior to that point that demonstrated to us that our equipment was unreliable.
ROSE: This controller says the FAA is paying a lot of attention to their concerns now, but that was not always the case before. The controller says they had asked the FAA to slow the number of planes using this airspace but were told no.
CHANG: Wait, go back a little bit. How did things in Newark airspace get so bad?
ROSE: I know, this is the big question that a lot of people have. In a sense, Newark is suffering from the same problems as the entire air traffic control system in the U.S. There's underinvestment in technology, in systems that are in many cases decades old. And there's a shortage of staffing for air traffic controllers. The system nationwide is thousands of controllers short. All of that is true. But according to this controller, the things that happened in Newark are also very specific to Newark, and in particular, the way the FAA moved the air traffic controllers who work the Newark airspace from Long Island to New York, to Philadelphia last year.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Reading) So this particular situation was a self-inflicted FAA decision to move us out of New York. We did not have these issues when we were in New York. And so you're trying to make it seem like, well, the FAA is in shambles, and that's why Newark is this problem. No, Newark is the problem because you moved us out of New York without a real plan.
ROSE: Let me back up here for a moment. For years, the FAA had been talking about moving control of the Newark airspace out of Long Island, which handles the other two big airports in the New York area, LaGuardia and JFK. And for a long time, the FAA had trouble hiring enough controllers to staff the facility on Long Island. The training success rate there was also low, and those who did work there made a lot of money in overtime. So the FAA decided the long-term solution here was to move the controllers who handle Newark to Philadelphia, where the cost of living is lower and it would be easier to recruit. Here's Michael Whitaker, the FAA administrator during the Biden administration, explaining the rationale for this back in November.
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MICHAEL WHITAKER: With this move, we're able to relieve the stress in New York and improve controller staffing levels by recruiting and training controllers in Philadelphia. This has been meant to get us healthy on a staffing level.
ROSE: As part of this move, some of the controllers from Long Island were forced to relocate. They all get a bonus of $100,000. But many still do not like this because they have families, kids in schools. The controller we spoke to was not happy about the move.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Reading) I get it in a sense, like why. They were like, well, let's move it somewhere else. But I feel like the way they went about it was really haphazard. It was really reckless, honestly, and it was a little bit cruel to us as people, as the controllers, who they moved.
ROSE: There had been 33 certified air traffic controllers working the Newark airspace from Long Island. Two dozen of them made the move last summer to Philadelphia. And according to the controller we spoke to, some of them had big concerns even then about how the move would work from a technical standpoint. Still, the controller says, they tried to keep an open mind, but even they were surprised at how badly it has gone.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Reading) It's been worse of a disaster than even, like, the most cynical people in the union predicted. It's been a debacle.
ROSE: The FAA did not respond directly to these allegations. But the agency says it is working on an expedited plan to install new fiber-optic lines to replace the copper wires that are still in use in some places and adding new backup systems to help with the technical issues in Newark. And Sean Duffy, the Transportation secretary, says the agency is, quote, "supercharging" the hiring of new air traffic controllers. But the reality is that it takes years to train them. And there is a nationwide staffing shortage right now that is especially acute in Philadelphia, where some of these controllers have taken trauma leave to recover from the psychological impact of the recent outages, including the controller we spoke to.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Reading) We are at our limit. Our families are telling us, you need a break. Like, our friends are telling us, you don't seem OK. We're all at that point. Like, you can tell people are breaking down. You can see the misery when people show up to work. There have been grown men crying in the parking lot on their breaks because of our work conditions.
CHANG: God, it just seems unsustainable. I guess the bottom line is, is Newark Airport safe?
ROSE: A lot of people say yes. The FAA just announced that they are temporarily cutting the number of flights in Newark to 56 per hour. That's a number that reflects what the air traffic control system can actually handle. But I put this question to the controller who works the airspace, and here's what they told me.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Reading) I had my best friend ask me the other day, like, I got a Newark flight - is it going to be fine? I was like, no, don't fly out of Newark. Like, at the very least, you're going to be delayed, but no. Like, I've had to book flights. And Newark is the cheapest option, the most convenient option 9 times out of 10, and I'm not going to do it.
ROSE: Even the Transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, admitted that he had his wife change her flight from Newark to LaGuardia Airport in New York City...
CHANG: Wow.
ROSE: ...Not because it was unsafe, he said, but just because she needed to get where she was going. And I think a lot of people will be wrestling with those kinds of choices.
CHANG: That is NPR transportation correspondent Joel Rose. Thank you so much, Joel.
ROSE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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