NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — US aviation safety regulators proposed temporarily limiting flights at Newark airport to no more than 28 arrivals per hour after a pair of radar and radio outages fueled major disruptions in recent weeks.
The proposal mirrors an earlier one from the Federal Aviation Administration that, when counting an equivalent number of departures, would cap operations at 56 total flights per hour while construction on one of Newark Liberty International Airport’s runways is underway.
The agency would allow a maximum of 34 arrivals per hour through Oct. 25 when construction isn’t underway, the FAA said in a statement on Friday. That would translate to 68 total flights. Daily work on the runway will end June 15 but continue on Saturdays until the end of the year, the FAA said.
The proposal comes after three days of discussions between FAA officials and carriers including United Airlines Holdings Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc. and JetBlue Airways Corp. to address the strains on air traffic controllers handling flights in and out of the busy hub. Newark airport routinely handled more than 70 flights an hour during peak periods.
“Reducing the number of flights scheduled at Newark will help ensure that we can safely and reliably operate the flights that remain on the schedule,” United said in a statement.
A final decision on the proposed limits won’t be made until at least May 28, when a public comment period is scheduled to conclude.
Concerns over aging technology and chronic understaffing at US air traffic control facilities came to a head on April 28, when radar screens went black and radios fell silent at a Philadelphia center guiding planes in and out of Newark.
The outage left controllers unable to see or communicate with planes in some of the nation’s most congested airspace for about 90 seconds. A similar incident at the site occurred earlier this month.
The FAA has taken steps to address the problems at Newark in the near term, such as upgrading telecommunications infrastructure and deploying a temporary backup system for additional redundancy.
Another air traffic facility managing flights into Denver International Airport briefly lost several radio frequencies on Monday.
None of the incidents resulted in accidents or injuries.
In a statement, American Airlines Group Inc. said the FAA talks also addressed issues at facilities elsewhere in the US that “demonstrate the urgent need to staff up and modernize our air traffic control system.”
United, which dominates service at Newark, earlier voluntarily cut 35 daily round trips at the airport in response to days of disruption following the April 28 technology outage. Problems at Newark, United’s biggest hub for international departures and a main gateway for its domestic routes, can cascade across the carrier’s network.
United Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby as well as FAA and US Transportation Department officials have repeatedly said that flying at Newark is safe.
The section of the Philadelphia facility charged with overseeing the Newark area has been operating with about 63% of certified controllers that it should have, the FAA has said.
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