back to article 90-second Newark blackout exposes parlous state of US air traffic control

Air traffic controllers for Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey were horrified when all radar and radio equipment, including backup systems, failed last week, cutting communication with aircraft for 90 seconds. Operators were reportedly in tears, with one experiencing heart palpitations, during the brief …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A job that burns up people

    I've seen a movie about air traffic controllers that sums up the job pretty nicely.

    One of the air traffic controllers could not come near the building anymore without breaking down and run. Even though he desperately wanted to get in again.

    US air traffic controll has been lingering without adequate funding, adequate staffing, adequate salaries, and adequate equipment.

    Clearly a target for DOGE "attention".

    One more reason not to fly to the US in the foreseeable future.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: A job that burns up people

      I think you'll find that film's called "Pushing Tin".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A job that burns up people

        "Pushing Tin"

        That's the one!

        I quickly realized that was no job for me, never.

        1. David Hicklin Silver badge

          Re: A job that burns up people

          > I quickly realized that was no job for me, never.

          I had a game for the Atari called Kennedy Approach where you play ATC, its pretty basic and low res (other platforms were available and there is a windows clone around). Good fun when a trainee but some of the higher levels were pretty stressful and had me rebooting the game - if only real life was so simple.

  2. Simon Harris Silver badge

    Painfully similar...

    "The outage was apparently down to a single unsheathed copper wire shorting out equipment at the ATC facility located to the southwest in Philadelphia."

    "With the bare end of the old wire lying near to the terminal which had once been its home and with the other end still being connected to the fuse, there existed a potential for disaster... That potential was tragically realised when other work came to be done in the same relay room two Sundays later on the eve of the accident"

    That second quote is from Anthony Hidden QC's Investigation into the Clapham Junction Railway Accident, which occurred on 12 December 1988 killing 35 people, and injuring 484, 69 seriously.

    Have people not learned in the intervening 37 years that bare wires and safety critical systems are not a good combination?

    1. Tron Silver badge

      Re: Painfully similar...

      I hate to be the one to break it to you, but when people say 'lessons will be learned', they are lying.

      1. R Soul Silver badge

        lessons will be learned

        But lessons are learned: how to blame others, how to dodge responsibility, how to be far away from the next catastrophe, etc. That's always what happens.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Re: lessons will be learned

          And how to blame it all on the previous administration.

          Never forget to do that. It's all the fault of your predecessor. Your conscience is clear, as clear as a fogged-up pane of glass after a hot shower.

    2. Gordon Shumway

      Re: Painfully similar...

      You obviously have never seen US wiring.

  3. Decay

    A slightly more detailed news article

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/us/inside-the-multi-day-meltdown-at-newark-airport

    Some wildass speculation from me follows, so take it for what it's worth.

    As far as I can see, the controllers operate out of Philly but the radar and comms are located in Westbury. And judging by the loss of radar and comms the tx/rx and antennas are also remote in Westbury. On the same connection, which seems dumb. But whatever, the backup link is there to cover that. But it looks like the backup link or systems took 90 seconds to fail over or recognize they were on the backup link. Eeek!

    Assuming the planes are arriving into Newark airspace, asking for Bravo clearance means they are outside the Bravo airspace, i.e. not about to imminently land, and also the airport tower has it's own VHF locally, so again suggest this was for planes a fair bit out. But they are doing 400 knots and more, 400 knots is about 675 feet per second so those planes have moved 60,000 feet in 90 seconds or about 11.5 statute miles.

    The only saving grace is likely they were already being sequenced and air traffic controllers have phenomenal spatial awareness of their air space and likely set everyone on divergent headings and altitudes and had nearby airports take control of any planes that they could see or communicate with. But yeah, high stress I bet.

    The comment that fiber would have solved it is asinine, whether the copper breaks or fiber breaks, or the rack that contains the equipment is blown by a live wire, redundancy is they key point, and running radar data and comms on the same connection seems to me to be asking for trouble and then a 90 second cutover is not optimal, I'd be taking a magnifying glass and a rectal probe to that system and asking some urgent questions.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      From the linked report:

      The Department of Transportation will announce a plan Thursday to transform the air traffic control system, remodeling an outdated system that contributed to days of delays at Newark, Duffy, the transportation secretary, told Fox News on Monday.

      ...

      Duffy has since pledged to implement a new, “state-of-the-art” system at air traffic control facilities across the country that would be the “envy of the world” – but said it might take three to four years.

      “We are going to radically transform the way air traffic control looks,” Duffy told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.

      President Donald Trump has “bought into the plan,” he said

      In normal times that might be good news. Now it might be a case of the most terrifying words in the English languge being "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

      1. Decay

        Unfortunately they have been saying similar for a decade or more. And it will likely take a massive loss of life to get it moving. In the US I would have thought this was a prime Army Corp of Engineers type body of work?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Surely … for the Air Force Corps of Engineers ?

      2. BadRobotics
        Coat

        No doubt another job for SuperMusk and his cohorts of AI...

        1. HereIAmJH Silver badge

          Starlink

          I have been waiting for the announcement that they dropped in a couple Starlink dishes and problem solved.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Starlink

            Hardly. A couple of Starlink dishes would never fix all the problems, without an xAI subscription, and control by Palantir.

      3. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Upgrade!

        “We are going to radically transform the way air traffic control looks”

        So, they are going to replace all the incandescent control panel indicator lights which have red covers, with modern blue LEDs.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. TeeCee Gold badge

    I have to suspect that anyone reduced to tears or suffering heart palpitations as a result of a 90 second glitch probably isn't cut out for the job anyway.

    ATC is the absolute bollocks of high-stress jobs, careers are short and the burnout rate is high. This sort of thing comes free with a job where you know damned well that one cockup will result in hundreds of corpses and possibly, your execution by gangsters. It doesn't help that nobody ever notices or remembers the ones that don't fuck up.

    1. Press any key

      Can you split your comment in two so I can down-vote the first paragraph and up-vote the second.

    2. IGotOut Silver badge

      Maybe the person that had tears was close to breaking point and the thought that potentially they could watch hundreds of people die in front of them was the part that pushed them over the edge.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Suffering those systems as a result of a 90 second glitch (and note that they wouldn't have known it was going to be "only" 90 seconds) was probably the result of already being at the limit due to accumulated stress. They have my sympathy and, from me, no suggestion at all that they "weren't cut out for the job".

    4. Decay

      We have no idea how any individual reacts under those types of stresses and we have no idea what baseline stress they were operating under that this tipped them over. I've seen "hard" men weep at relatively non consequential scenarios, and "wimps" stand up and get stuff done in scenarios that left me and others shellshocked. Never judge. The expression "There but for the Grace of God go I" comes to mind.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Never forget that the military have a saying : training is a necessity, but you don't know how a man will react until he's being shot at by people who actually want to kill him.

        1. Korev Silver badge

          I have quite a few friends who ski off-piste. They've done the training and have suitable emergency gear; but who knows if they'd actually pull the trigger etc if they got caught in an avalanche

    5. HuBo Silver badge
      Windows

      It's a powerful image to see a tough person cry ... it evokes conditions that have become overwhelmingly unbearable ("God forbid one ever has to walk a mile in their shoes").

    6. Jaxx
      Alert

      I cannot understand why anybody would want to be an ATC. Compared to a pilot, there is more stress and responsibility, less pay, status and perks. Perhaps, one day, the job will be done by dispassionate AIs, anyone want to volunteer as test subject?

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        ATC Career

        When I was young, I thought I would like to be an ATC as the work appeared interesting. I found this DOS-based, character-mode game which simulated being an ATC, and found I could not get past even the first level. I learned my brain is not wired to process that sort of information/do those sorts of calculations sufficiently-quickly.

        I de-selected "air traffic controller" as a potential career, and have the highest respect for the people who can do that sort of work.

        1. Joe Drunk

          Re: ATC Career

          When I was younger it was Kennedy Approach by Microprose on my Commodore 64 that helped rule out ATC as a possible career path.

    7. rg287 Silver badge

      I have to suspect that anyone reduced to tears or suffering heart palpitations as a result of a 90 second glitch probably isn't cut out for the job anyway.

      ATC is a stressful job. People wouldn't make it through training if they couldn't handle stress (albeit the burnout rate is still high). I went through part of the process at NATS (in the UK) and there was a Q&A with a recently qualified controller who was completely candid about the fact that at various points in your training you'd go and have a cry in the loos or your car. They wrung it out of you on a "train-hard, fight-easy" basis.

      But what happened at Newark is basically never-never "you're a passenger in a car going over a cliff" territory.

      Lose radar? That's bad, but you have headings and you can talk to the aircraft, let them know the situation, keep people parked in their stacks and potentially talk to other control centres to have them take over (at least for aircraft declaring low fuel, etc).

      Lose comms? Well at least you can call other control centres and tell them "Hey, you need to move this aircraft and that aircraft".

      ATC train for loss of tech. They can fall back to paper (albeit at a loss of capacity).

      To lose all radar and comms is basically a matter of "go to the break room, turn on CNN and watch the aircraft crash that you were responsible for". You've got airliners with hundreds of pax doing 400kts and they're basically onto visual flight rules - except you haven't told them that. Because you have no comms. And even if they were all neatly on diverging paths in your sector, at 400kts some of them will be leaving your sector soon (and other joining) and if those controllers are sat around you looking at their similarly dead consoles... well bugger. Your diverging paths weren't necessarily clear through the next sector or the one after that.

      It's a high responsibility job and you have been left with nothing. And momentarily that's bad, but recoverable. About 45seconds into staring at a blank screen with no radio and having called everyone you have a landline to saying "we got nothing" you'd be getting very stressed about where the hell the backup is. At 75 seconds? Yeah, you kick back and either laugh or cry because what else is there to do? And I'd be worried about the ones who were laughing.

      I don't know what US shift patterns look like of ocurse. Back when I looked at it here in the UK, the general imtimation was that you couldn't spend more than 45 minutes on console between breaks, and usually they had enough staffing that you'd be relieved before making it to 40. In an 8-hour shift you'd be unlikely to log more than 4 hours on console.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > To lose all radar and comms is basically a matter of "go to the break room, turn on CNN and watch the aircraft crash that you were responsible for".

        That part where you lost all ability to do a job? It's not your job any more. Go watch CNN. (Be ready for when it is your job again.)

        The thing about air space and planes is: planes are actually relatively small compared to the atmosphere above a county (city? only for a few seconds!) It's probably much less likely that two planes, flying on their current path, would impact each other than getting struck by lightning - twice - on consecutive days - maybe even while it's sunny out. The biggest problem is probably: if things come within a couple *miles* of each other, people will become abjectly fearful and demand heads - despite there having not been any actual risk.

        It sounds like they train people to experience stress. Landing scheduling and ordering, sure, that could be intense and involve lots of information, and a potential to cause physical overlap (a bad thing), but pilots are presumably not blind and can be aware of another plane beside them. Car analogy: You're in a car moving at a fixed 327 kph speed and don't have a brake. Every other car is moving at the same speed as you, and will not stop. You're about to take the on-ramp onto a 47 lane highway, of which 47 lanes are unoccupied, and there isn't another car for 27 miles behind you or 15 miles in front of you. You've lost your CB radio and can't communicate with any of the other cars. How screwed are you? Is a crash imminent? Are you, personally, unable to deal with this scenario that you've trained in for tens of thousands of hours?

        Anyway, the safety factor is so great it doesn't matter if they lose comms. Evidence? They lost comms and nothing crashed. Nor are there reports of any almost-events after having lost comms.

        1. rg287 Silver badge

          The thing about air space and planes is: planes are actually relatively small compared to the atmosphere above a county (city? only for a few seconds!) It's probably much less likely that two planes, flying on their current path, would impact each other than getting struck by lightning

          In normal airspace yes. Not in crowded airspace around NYC where aircraft are departing every minute and being sequenced for approach/landing. Newark's sector is busy on it's own. But it's adjacent to JFK, LaGuardia and Teterboro. Not to mention all the rotary (helicopter) traffic around NYC (see recent DC crash).

      2. Missing Semicolon Silver badge

        Wasn't there a case where some of the comms went down for Smart Motorways in the UK? So the controllers could see the cameras, but not update the signs. They all watched the screens, hoping not to see the unaware artic plough into the helpless minibus....

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue

    9. wimton@yahoo.com

      A Swiss air traffic controler was murdered by the father of a girl that died in a plane collision that he caused.

      The air traffic controller wanted to apologize to the families of the victims, but the legal department forbade him to do so.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        The Swiss controller did not cause that crash. He was operating on his own, with degraded comms and maintenance being done on his systems. His bosses caused that crash by leaving him two or three people's worth of work to operate the area safely without the usual systems in operation.

    10. Don Jefe

      The answer is to be found in modifying the job to better suit the available employee pool, not continuing to burn up the small number of people who are capable of doing the job.

      Air traffic control (ATC) is a popular example of capitalism’s legacy creation problem. There’s a finite amount of money to be made in catering to the needs of ATC so nobody is interested in changing anything. It’s pretty much a parts replacement business.

      As a general rule, humans aren’t the problem. It’s poor engineering and design to deprioritize users. It’s a lame excuse to put money above people, and it’s time for that kind of nonsense to end.

      1. vtcodger Silver badge

        Air traffic control (ATC) is a popular example of capitalism’s legacy creation problem. There’s a finite amount of money to be made in catering to the needs of ATC so nobody is interested in changing anything. It’s pretty much a parts replacement business.

        Sort of like the levees in New Orleans before they failed and killed 1100 people? We're told that funds for some long deferred levee work suddenly became available after 2005.

        There may well be some of that. But there's also the issue that Air Traffic Control is and always has been an enormously difficult problem. There are large numbers of aircraft operating in some areas. With all sorts of different equipment and capabilities. And their every now and then their equipment may not be working quite right which means that every now and then their reported position and altitude may not be quite what their pilots and their instrumentation think them to be. And sometimes there is air traffic in the area (military or private) that isn't under the control of ATC. That;s not supposed to happen. But it does, And of course, every airport is a bit different. And is a bit differently equipped. And has different rules and procedures. And there's always human error. And weather. And birds. And the fact that aircraft often have fairly limited time to linger in the air before landing somewhere, anywhere, becomes an urgent priority.

        I've long been amazed that ATC works as well as it does.

  6. IGotOut Silver badge

    Good job...

    ...that the nutjobs in power made it an even less attractive job to be in.

  7. Eclectic Man Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Bare wire

    I wonder how long the system has been operating? Electrical insulation decays after a while. The blame may fall onto one wire, but the whole thing should be examined. Years ago (sometime last century), I was told that a signal box on the UK's railway could not be maintained as the insulation on the wires was so old it had decayed. Any movement and it would all fall off.

    My guess is that it is not just this system, so although the investment announced is welcome, it will probably be a big job.

    1. Like a badger

      Re: Bare wire

      The majority of infrastructure is kept in service far beyond any reasonably expected asset life. If it's installed and working, who wants to spend money until it breaks? Cases in the UK include Victorian era railway civils works, Victorian sewers, 1940's and earlier water pipes, decrepit and long-written down copper telecoms networks, there's still mains cable in service with paper insulation. Rather than build new road bridges it's preferred to keep using not really adequate structures built hundreds of years ago - I occasionally use an A road that runs across Swarkestone bridge. The new bit of Swarkestone bridge dates back to 1795, the oldest bits to around the 13th century.

      If somebody does a decent estimate of what's needed to update US ATC assets and creates a ten year plan to fix all know obsolete systems and infrastructure, then I guarantee you that somebody else (especially the airlines) will bleat that it is too expensive and should be deferred, and what is to be done should be lashed up on the cheap.

      Whether you're a company boss or a politician, faced with the option to splash money on new shiney stuff, or the replacement of unseen, poorly understood assets that are just about working, you know what they'll plump for.

      1. Sandtitz Silver badge

        Re: Bare wire

        "The majority of infrastructure is kept in service far beyond any reasonably expected asset life[...]Victorian sewers"

        Those brand-spanking-new sewers will be fine as long as they are maintainced.

        Cloaca Maxima has been in use for over 2,500 years.

      2. Mog_X

        Re: Bare wire

        I often cross the same Swarkestone bridge and seen the 'adjustments' vehicles have done to the walls. I always check Google Maps before deciding to cross the Trent there.

        At least it stopped the Jacobites from advancing on London!

      3. David Hicklin Silver badge

        Re: Bare wire

        > Victorian era railway civils works

        Mind you those Victorian's did some pretty good and sturdy constructions in many places.

        And yeah Swarkestone bridge, crossed it many times and it fine until something big (but under 7.5t) comes the other way.

        1. Like a badger

          Re: Bare wire

          "Mind you those Victorian's did some pretty good and sturdy constructions in many places."

          They certainly did, but that compounds the problem, because the owners decide to spend money simply doing a fix to an asset where they'd never build that capacity/design/route now. A good example is the Victorian railway embankments, which after a century of service are starting to need refurbishment, but that's all that is done, rather than thinking about new purpose built assets that can offer fast, safe transport between places people want to go, for the volumes that want to travel. France doesn't have this infrastructure constipation - they built plenty of 18th century railways too, but unlike Britain they got off their arses and built the world's best high rail speed network using new routes. There's similar things to say about Victorian sewers, bridges etc - good and durable, but reflecting environmental standards of the time, needs and capacity limits of the time.

          A further though about Britain's inability to design and build infrastructure, some of our best aligned roads remain those built in about AD50-180 when certain Italian types had colonised Britain.

          1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

            Re: Bare wire

            some of our best aligned roads remain those built in about AD50-180 when certain Italian types had colonised Britain

            Quote from a previous (Italian, from Rome) colleague:

            "You know you are in trouble when you stop acting like Romans and act like Italians.."

      4. Peter2

        Re: Bare wire

        Cases in the UK include Victorian era railway civils works

        As a result of being absurdly overbuilt, as a steam engine, water tank and coal supply weighs rather more than an electric motor and a pole to the overhead supply. There's no point in replacing an overbuilt bit of civil engineering with an underbuilt bit of civil engineering just to say "this is new"; those old bridges will outlast anybody using them as long as basic maintenance like checking the foundations aren't being swept away are done.

        , Victorian sewers,

        The ones designed on a "we are only doing this once" basis, which included a far sighted decision to take a generous estimate of the maximum required capacity and then doubling that when they built it resulting in them accepting the addition of modern tower blocks and skyscrapers on the same infrastructure? The only thing they've replaced is the pumps, and the only reason for that is that the newer ones are higher power; not because the originals weren't reliable in moving shit (both literally and figuratively).

        1940's and earlier water pipes

        If it ain't broke...

        , decrepit and long-written down copper telecoms networks
        ,

        Which barring a handful of exceptions, exist only from the house to the cabinet because it's not really justified on a price to performance basis.

        there's still mains cable in service with paper insulation.

        Where? If there is genuinely pre VIR cable in use somewhere in the suppliers network (other than a museum) then report it and they'll get renewed. If it's on private property then that's down to the owner.

        Rather than build new road bridges it's preferred to keep using not really adequate structures built hundreds of years ago - I occasionally use an A road that runs across Swarkestone bridge. The new bit of Swarkestone bridge dates back to 1795, the oldest bits to around the 13th century.

        And the bridge is still doing the job perfectly well after 200 years, with the sole problem being that SUV's are too physically big to fit on the bridge. Which some might suggest is a problem with the SUV's, not the bridge.

    2. Simon Harris Silver badge

      Re: Bare wire

      Indeed, the Clapham Junction Accident report comments that while the wire that caused the accident should have been disconnected at both ends, it was only disconnected at one end because access to the other end would have required disturbing the embrittled coverings on all the other wires.

      It also points out that the work leading up to the accident was part of the Waterloo Area Resignalling Scheme, modernising equipment that had been installed in 1936 (over 50 years before).

      https://www.jesip.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Clapham-Rail-Crash.pdf

  8. PCScreenOnly

    Agree

    Except for the last sentence

  9. zeos

    I don't say evasion, I say avosion.

  10. AK565

    It's always been around, but seems to have become much more pervasive in the past 20 years or so. It's pretty much everywhere you look.

    - Workers who leave aren't replaced. The workload of those who stay increases with no corresponding increases in pay.

    - Funding for upkeep in real terms drops a percentage point or two every year.

    - Quality/quantity of output drops. Eventually there's some major fuck-up.

    - Everybody stands around and acts surprised.

    - Major reforms are promised with about one percent actually happening.

    - At some subsequent point people wonder why fewer and fewer people go into that field

    - Rinse and repeat after nauseum.

    A friend is flying Newark to Paris Sunday. He is not amused.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The world is run by wankers with MBAs and the line must go up.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My father used to be an air traffic controller here in the UK. Their pension fund used to be one of the best - because they kept on dying before retiring.

    My father got out early (spurred on by when of his friends died of a heart attack whilst still in service) Whilst my dad got out early, he has massive heart problems from the decades of stress.

    He was always grateful that he never worked as an ATC in America.

  12. PhilipN Silver badge

    90 seconds -

    - about how long it will take Trump to blame Biden. No - make that 9 seconds

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 90 seconds -

      Make Planes Fall Off Ships Again!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Career choices

    Seriously looked into ATC when I was a young man.

    Dad, being an ex pilot, just shook his head and said “how about something else?”

  14. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    I'm reminded of a documentary I saw

    I was watching a program on the Miracle on the Hudson. Captain Sullenberger strutting his funky stuff - and showing himself to be a steely-eyed missile man with "the Right Stuff".

    There was a little bit at the end on the poor bloke in ATC. He's repeatedly offered Sullenberger the chance to divert to Teterboro - to which Sullengberger's last response was to say, "we're going for the Hudson" and then to stop talking to him. He was a tad busy... Then the plane disappears off his radar screen.

    Procedure was to send him off to a break room, on his own, to write his report on the accident, with no distractions or input from anyone else. Although I don't think he got much writing done, more sitting in stunned silence with occasional crying.

    It took someone nearly an hour to think to pop their head round the door and tell him that everyone had survived - and there wasn't a smoking crater somewhere filled with the bodies of those he'd been responsible for, plus some other random unlucky people who happened to be in the wrong place on the ground.

    I hope they've looked at those procedures since. Clearly you don't want anyone interfering with getting the evidence. But the mentail health of the poor bastard should also be a factor.

    Even though there wasn't anything more he could have done. I should imagine he was still finding ways to blame, and second-guess, himself - and endured probably the worst hour of his life, with no support and no-one to talk to.

  15. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

    ATC explained by David Gunson

    All you need to know:

    https://youtu.be/7KbUNzi58wM?si=LFazkUCmS_7CLQvw

    Saw him live once, recommended.

  16. tip pc Silver badge

    And another outage on May 9th

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/radar-screens-newark-airport-black-overnight/story?id=121638395`

    https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/united-states/second-power-outage-at-busy-new-jersey-airport/video/550deebbfe9dae8affc091b38fe04334

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