CNN
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Air traffic controllers in Philadelphia were guiding planes to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey last week when communications suddenly crashed.
“Approach, are you there?” one pilot asked the controller.
The controller stopped responding.
United Airlines Flight 1951, flying from New Orleans to the Newark hub, tried to radio the controller five times before finally getting a response.
“United 1951, how do you hear me?” the controller asks, according to air traffic control conversations recorded by the website LiveATC.net.
“I got you loud and clear, United 1951,” the pilot responds.
For at least 90 seconds, controllers lost the ability to see planes on radar scopes and for a minute they could not communicate with pilots, a source with knowledge of the situation tells CNN. (Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday air traffic controllers lost contact for 30 seconds.)
The April 28 outage impacted information coming from radars located at a Federal Aviation Administration facility in Westbury, New York, where the air traffic controllers used to manage flights heading to Newark. Control over the airspace was transferred to Philadelphia in July. The radars are now operated using a remote line the source described as “a long extension cord.”
The outage was the result of a failure of that copper wiring that transmits information to Newark approach control, a separate source tells CNN. “There was some infrastructure breakdown related to how the information is relayed right now.”
Similar outages happened twice before, the first source notes.
Those earlier incidents were reported to the FAA safety reporting system and “adjustments were made,” which kept the systems stable until the most recent loss, they say.
The technology interruption ultimately cascaded into a weeklong meltdown at Newark, one of the nation’s largest airports. It resulted in delays and cancellations for thousands of customers, controllers taking leave for trauma, and renewed scrutiny on an outdated air traffic control system.
The chaos also highlighted the challenges of an understaffed system, the latest incident in an already turbulent year for aviation that included a deadly collision between a passenger jet and US army helicopter.
Controllers at Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control, which coordinates planes arriving at Newark, temporarily lost access to the systems that help them guide the aircraft, meaning they were unable to see, hear or talk to the planes, officials said. Controllers lost primary communication, and the backup line did not immediately take over, Duffy told Fox News Monday. Audio obtained by CNN reveals the tense moments at the Philadelphia control center.
“United (flight) 674, radar contact lost,” a controller tells a pilot flying to Newark from Charleston, South Carolina. “We lost our radar so just stay on the arrival and maintain 6000 (feet).”
The same flight, traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, returns to the radar but does not show up in an accurate position.
The connectivity between FAA radar and the frequencies that air traffic controllers use to manage planes at the airport “completely failed,” a source with knowledge of the situation said. Without radar, another approach controller told the pilot of a smaller aircraft to rely on towers for clearance.
“Do I have bravo clearance?” the pilot asks. Bravo clearance is permission to enter into the airspace surrounding a larger airport, like Newark Liberty.
“No, you do not have a bravo clearance. We lost our radar and it’s not working correctly. Radar service terminates… If you want a bravo clearance, you can just call the tower when you get closer,” the controller said.
Colin Scoggins, a former air traffic controller and retired military specialist at the FAA, told CNN that losing both radar and communications on the job can be a scary experience.
“If you cannot talk to a pilot, then you’re really in trouble,” he said. “I would find it very traumatic.”
“You’re sitting there watching the situation unfold, kind of like on 911, you see situations unfold that you have no control over. And when you’re a controller, you want to be in control. When you take that away, it can be very traumatic,” Scoggins added.
“Imagine driving down the highway in traffic and someone puts blindfold over eyes and tells you to keep driving and when you come back from driving dark you have to figure out what to do next,” a source told CNN.
About 15 to 20 flights were being controlled by Newark Liberty approach controllers when communication and radar went down on April 28, according to an analysis by flight tracking site Flightradar24.
The number is based on the altitude of aircraft bound for and departing Newark and audio from the approach radio frequency, Ian Petchenik, the director of communications for the site, tells CNN.
No crashes occurred, but at least five FAA employees took 45 days of trauma leave afterward.
Aviation analyst Miles O’Brien told CNN that the controllers did what they could with a potentially dangerous situation.
“I think, as I always say, that the controllers, the individuals who run this system daily, perform quiet heroic acts, in spite of a system that is built to set them up for failure. I believe in those people doing their job, but there’s only so much stress they can take,” O’Brien said.
The incident has compounded existing staffing shortages and equipment failures and contributed to frustrating hourslong delays for passengers, Duffy told Fox News.
A CNN analysis of FAA airspace advisories shows at least 14 straight days of FAA-imposed delays for flights to or from Newark.
Airlines canceled 160 flights to or from Newark Liberty on Monday, with more than 400 flights delayed, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. The airport’s cancellations accounted for more than a quarter of all flight cancellations nationwide on Monday.
And on Tuesday, the FAA announced a ground delay for inbound flights at the airport, causing further delays.
The FAA has indicated it expects delays at the airport to continue due to the staffing shortages. Duffy noted that authorities will have to slow traffic at Newark before restoring full capacity.
A stormy weather pattern stuck in place in the Northeast is further complicating efforts to keep air traffic moving through the airport in northern New Jersey, where low clouds and rain are expected throughout the week.
The current shortage of air traffic controllers is nearly the worst in 30 years, said the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents 10,800 certified air traffic controllers across the country.
The control facility responsible for traffic at Newark has been “chronically understaffed for years,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a Friday message addressing the delays. He also said the shortage was compounded by over 20% of FAA controllers who “walked off the job” at Newark Airport last week.
The controllers’ union said workers did not “walk off the job.”
“The controllers didn’t just walk off the job, they were traumatized, their equipment failed,” the source with knowledge of the situation said. “It’s written in the regulations if they experience a traumatic event — they can take time off to go see psychiatrist. The people working that day did that.”
But filling those empty positions is not an issue that can be sorted overnight, according to the FAA.
New air traffic control applicants must be younger than 31 years old so they can work the mandatory 20 or 25 years needed to qualify for pensions before their mandatory retirement age of 56, according to the FAA. Physical stamina and mental sharpness are critical to performing the job.
And air traffic controllers can’t simply fill in at a different airport without extensive preparation.
“When you first start at an air traffic control facility, you have to do a lot of memorization,” said Michael McCormick, a professor and air traffic management coordinator at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
“Most air traffic controllers don’t just monitor one airport. Many keep tabs on dozens of other regional airports to make sure planes keep a safe distance from each other.”
The FAA acknowledged a wave of new controllers won’t come overnight.
“While we cannot quickly replace (the controllers) due to this highly specialized profession, we continue to train controllers who will eventually be assigned to this busy airspace,” the FAA said.
A total of 885 Newark flights have been canceled since the April 28 air traffic control meltdown, according to an analysis by FlightRadar24, which notes that not all of the canceled flights were related to air traffic control issues.
United Airlines has preemptively canceled 35 round trip flights to or from Newark – meaning 70 individual flights – per day.
Airline analytics firm Cirium says the Newark delays have been spiking significantly since April 26, days before the control equipment outage at the Philadelphia air control site.
“Since April 26, on-time departures have fallen to 63%, which is far below industry norms,” said Cirium’s Mike Arnot. “Prior to that date, an average of four flights per day were cancelled in April.”
Flights arriving to Newark were experiencing an average delay of 4 hours as of Tuesday evening, according to the FAA.
One passenger, Geraldine Wallace, told CNN Sunday she was anxious about the staffing shortage after her flight was delayed for almost three hours.
Mark Wallace, her partner, told CNN he was more worried about equipment failures.
“As concerning as the manpower issue is, according to news reports, the equipment that they’re using out of Philadelphia is antiquated,” he said.
Flexibility waivers are now available to impacted United Airlines customers with flights booked on or before May 4 and originally scheduled to fly from May 6 to 17, United said in an announcement Tuesday.
A separate waiver is available to customers with tickets purchased on or before April 29 for trips scheduled between May 1 and 5, the airline said.
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.
The system used to manage air traffic at Newark is “incredibly old,” Duffy said.
“We use floppy disks. We use copper wires,” he said Friday. “The system that we’re using is not effective to control the traffic that we have in the airspace today.”
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. Duffy also reiterated that the airspace was still safe.
Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said he wasn’t sure he’d want to fly out of Newark for the next 10 days.
“We have a very safe system, but anytime it’s stressed like this, where you have controllers who are feeling under maximum pressure, it impacts safety – and people have a right to be concerned,” Goelz told CNN.
“You cannot expect humans to function at their highest level for sustained periods of time with this kind of pressure on them.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Holly Yan, Mary Gilbert, Rene Marsh and Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.
